Marking ten years since its founding, CRAVE, the San Francisco-based company known for discreet, high-design luxury sex toys, is dropping its latest innovation in "pleasure jewelry." The Tease Ring drops its first 100-unit release on January 23, with two additional releases to follow.

The Tease Ring is a combination of elegant statement jewelry ring and discreet finger vibrator. According to CRAVE's co-founder and VP of Design Ti Chang, "We believe beautiful objects facilitate connections, especially in intimate settings. Tease Ring, a decade in the making, embodies this philosophy."

Chang is no stranger to Core77. An earlier version of the Tease Ring product, the "Vesper Touch and Tease Rings," won a 2020 Core77 Design Award in the Personal Accessories category and also received that year's Community Choice Prize. Chang served as Jury Captain for the Consumer Products category in 2018 and was a featured speaker at the Core77 2018 Conference: "Now What? Launching and Growing Your Creative Business."

Like CRAVE's other intimate products (which include a range of sleek vibrators), the Tease Ring is a marriage of form, function, and philosophy. According to the company's website, it is "designed for special occasions for unforgettable impressions" and offers power equal to their "Vesper" product in just one-half the size of that device.

The Anniversary Edition Tease Rings (first, second, and third releases) will be made in CRAVE's San Francisco micro-factory. Customers on the first access email list will have early access to the first release (100 units) 24 hours before the January 23 drop date. First release customers will also receive a serialized artwork – a print of a Tease sketch during early design development – signed by the designer. After the first release drop of 100 units in January, a second release of 500 units will drop in February, followed by a third release of a limited number of units. While the Tease Ring retails for $195 in silver and $279 in gold, the anniversary edition rings will be available for 30 percent off the retail price (available for U.S. shipping only).

The Tease Ring and CRAVE's other products derive their distinction by harnessing the impact of jewelry to address the more (traditionally) uncomfortable or taboo elements of pleasure products, turning those into a statement of self-expression and empowerment. Chang notes that jewelry has the power to create an "emotional experience" for people, to boost confidence, enhance one's beauty, and serve as a means of self-expression through style. "In contrast, I noticed that most pleasure products often perpetuate feelings of awkwardness and embarrassment," said Chang. "So, I created pleasure jewelry to support people's desire to express themselves, connect with others, and experience pleasure."

All of CRAVE's products are designed and developed by the company's women-led team in their advanced R&D center and micro-factory in San Francisco. Creating Tease took a decade of dedicated design, engineering, and manufacturing development. "Naturally, this product had to be beautiful," said Chang. "I wanted the aesthetic form to celebrate the purity of the stainless-steel material in a way that feels true to the function in a minimal yet effortless way."

According to Chang, producing pleasure jewelry – items that are both worn and functional – is much more complex than simply making a vibrating product. That's particularly true with a vibrating ring, which is small in scale and worn close to the body. "With Tease, we are working with micro-electronics that are incredibly tiny and difficult to work with," said Chang. "The scale of the electronics is so small that they are similar to Apple Airpods and Oura Rings, so the tolerances had to be tightly controlled. It was a real challenge to create a strong, vibrating product of that size that lasted for a significant amount of time, and waterproof on top of that as well."

She credits the company's team of engineers for making a product that performs as powerfully as the Vesper necklace and meets CRAVE's high standards for quality and precision. To ensure this level of quality, the company made what Chang called "a significant investment in our micro-factory in San Francisco, allowing us to build and assemble our limited-edition batch right here in the city."

The Tease Ring promises to be the latest in the decade-long CRAVE success story, a success which may have seemed unlikely to some observers. As Chang said, "On the surface, pleasure jewelry may not always appear logical, but it turns out that when done well, they are highly desirable."

To learn more about the Core77 Design Awards, or to submit your own entry in the Personal Accessory or another category, visit Core77 / Design Awards.