Conversations with the Inspiring Arielle Aquino

Today we’d like to introduce you to Arielle Aquino.

Arielle, let’s start with your story. We’d love to hear how you got started and how the journey has been so far.
In 2015, I went through a quarter-life crisis when my mother suddenly died of cancer. Seeing my mom – my best friend – go through that made me realize the fragility of life. The loss was a huge reality check as to what is truly important. I realized I wasn’t happy working in social media management and that it didn’t align with who I was and who my mom taught me to be. So, I quit my job and spent a year grieving and trying to understand death and seeking to uncover my life’s purpose.

Over the next several years, I worked in various roles and even started working with my dad which really helped our relationship. We began working together in the beauty industry – investing in and incubating beauty start-ups. We both loved and understood female consumer products and it was a wonderful way for us to grow closer and develop a mutual respect and admiration.

At the same time, I was doing a lot of personal growth exploration, meditation and working with various teachers and coaches. I was so determined to uncover my “purpose” and spent time agonizing and stressing over it. My coach said – your purpose is a combination of your greatest pain plus your greatest passion and when I really allowed that to reveal itself, everything clicked into place.

This was during the height of Me Too and a lot of my friends were coming forth with stories of their own. I was in so much pain thinking about my sisters going through these horrific experiences and it brought up all of my own Me Too stories that I had pushed down in the past. I realized something I was hearing over and over was how my friends felt they were a prisoner of their sexuality – that men seemed to only like them for their sex and that they felt they had to act uninterested in sex in order to avoid being taken advantage of. It was all too familiar to me – someone who loved sex and wanted to express herself as a sensual being but being afraid of it opening me up to unwanted advances.

So, my coach and therapist helped me to develop my voice and inner compass. I started to be able to state my boundaries and stand up for my yeses and nos while cultivating a deep love for myself and my sexuality. I felt powerful for the first time in my life because I embraced my sensuality in a way that was true to me.

At this exact time, my dad and I started looking at investing in industries other than beauty. I always joke that I got into this industry because of my dad but it’s kind of true! We were looking at other female-consumer product industries and sex toys was one we were researching. When I started looking into it, I found that the experience hadn’t really been updated since I was shopping for products in high school and college. Aside from a few outliers, the vast majority of the online and in-store experiences were the same sleazy, cheap ones I remembered. Even now, despite all this work, I was doing to embrace my sexuality and how confident I was, I would suddenly feel ashamed of going into these stores.

I needed to feel safe to explore and I felt that the way to heal from trauma was to lean into and understand my personal sensuality. But the experience of shopping and learning about this topic didn’t inspire me. It felt utilitarian and about getting off quickly, not about exploring one’s unique sensuality. There wasn’t anything catering to not only physical touch but all the other senses that play a part in arousal and connection. Sex was being sold to me as orgasm and no one was rooting it in the mind-body-spirit arousal I now know is the bigger picture. We are more than just sexual beings with physical experiences, we are sensual beings with spiritual experiences but no stores or brands were catering to that holistic perspective.

So, my purpose became the combination of my greatest pain: feeling that sex was something that women had to constantly defend and hide, coupled with my greatest passions – celebrating female sensuality, championing female business-owners and creating beauty out of darkness.

Our goal for The Sensualist is to be a welcoming space for people to explore and love their sensuality so they can become proud of it.

We’re always bombarded by how great it is to pursue your passion, etc. – but we’ve spoken with enough people to know that it’s not always easy. Overall, would you say things have been easy for you?
Everyone says the entrepreneurial experience is hard but I wouldn’t say that is necessarily true. It is definitely challenging work and there is a steep learning curve to starting a business. We all specialize in some things but building a business means you have to do everything… but you can’t be an expert in everything. That’s why I can’t stress enough the importance of hiring the right team. I believe in focusing on the things you’re best at and hiring people where you can, to focus on the areas you find most challenging. This will save you a lot of time in the long run and make you more efficient.

My advice is that you have to find the thing you’re most passionate about. And you’ll know if you’re not passionate about it because you’ll be dragging your feet to make it happen. Starting a business shouldn’t be such a burden and if it is, then it might not be your purpose or your life’s dream. That’s ok – you’ll figure out what is and once you find it there will be no separation of work and life. There is no work-life balance, there is only work-life integration. Your work will become your life and when you find the thought of that exciting instead of awful, you’ll know you’ve found your thing.

So let’s switch gears a bit and go into The Sensualist story. Tell us more about the business.
The Sensualist is a wellness brand focused on sensuality. We are not a sex store. We are instead a content platform and online store for full mind-body-spirit arousal.

While traditional sex stores are focused on orgasm, it isn’t our primary goal. Our goal is to celebrate and help you enjoy each step along the sensual journey. We want to strip away the pressure to orgasm, have great sex, own your pleasure or perform for a partner. We are here to help you get to the root of all of that: your sensual core and that means connecting with yourself first.

The Sensualist offers products to arouse all five senses. Our team has tested hundreds of products and we’re constantly hunting for the most interesting, most beautiful, most special pieces from brands we feel great about supporting. That means the products we carry are body-safe, non-toxic, naturally-derived, ethically sourced, with as minimal impact on the environment as possible. We curate products from around the world and where there are gaps in the market, we create our own.

Our content is written by our community. Instead of a lot of sex experts giving step-by-steps on how to have the best sex of your life, we are more interested in sharing the stories of regular people figuring out what works for them. We believe you never become a “sex expert” – instead, you just constantly evolve along your own personal journey of exploration and we celebrate that journey.

So much of the media coverage is focused on the challenges facing women today, but what about the opportunities? Do you feel there are any opportunities that women are particularly well-positioned for?
Women have the opportunity to define what we find beautiful, sensual, arousing and interesting by creating brands that speak to us. I’m always amazed at how many female-consumer products are created by men (from sex toys to cosmetics to lingerie) and while I definitely believe men are capable of creating amazing products for women; I believe we should be paying way more attention to female-founded businesses in these spaces. At The Sensualist, we are not women-only, we are women-led. 90% of the writers, designers, photographers and artists we work with are female. We let the women in our company define the brand voice and aesthetic and then provide that as a framework for men to create within. There’s a real opportunity for women to show men who we are and what we want.

We’ve just gone through a long period of time where men were basically the only ones working in the sex space and that meant the messaging was very masculine-focused and aesthetically arousing for the masculine.

Now, we’re ready to see the feminine view on sex and sensuality and that’s what The Sensualist provides. When we say masculine and feminine here, we’re not referring to “man” vs. “woman”. We’re not a brand solely for women – we are a brand for all people looking to develop their feminine perspective more. We all have masculine and feminine energy within us, regardless of gender, and we’re working to develop the feminine energy in all people a little more.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.thesensualist.com
• Email: info@thesensualist.com
• Instagram: the.sensualist

Image Credit:
Justin Rosenberg, Enrique Abed, Inna Shnayder, Isabella Bejarano

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