Last summer Stephen Magnusen and Franz Zwergel celebrated the launch of their new product, Uberlube, by drinking a toast . . . of lube. They filled shot glasses with the stuff, a cocktail of high-grade silicones and vitamin E, and downed it. Gross, yes, but it was also something of a testament to their deeply felt conviction about the product: that it’s not just for sex. “I mean, the name is lube, but we actually didn’t design it to be just lube,” Magnusen explains. It’s a massage oil, a moisturizer, a hair gel, a makeup primer, even a lock grease and a shoe polish, he says. Since going on the market the product has found its way into sex-toy stores, but it’s also sold at Art + Science hair salons in Chicago and Evanston and at trendy clothing boutiques like Fred Segal in Los Angeles. “It’s got all these alter egos,” Magnusen says. “I’ve heard of guys shining up their luggage with Uberlube.”
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Inspiration struck on a night out in fall 2002. “We were having burgers and beers with some old friends and we were talking about different products out there and a friend of ours mentions the word uberlube,” Zwergel says.
“She used the word uber as an adjective–she said, ‘It was the uber-lube,’” Magnusen says. “And Franz and I were both like, ‘Is that a real product?’ I didn’t even know what uber meant. I just liked the name. Franz and I decided that a couple days later, yeah, we should make it. We both decided to give it our all–no idea what it was. I found out what uber meant–super or above or beyond–so basically really, really good lube.”
After almost three solid weeks of 12-hour days, their experiments grew increasingly obsessive-compulsive. Zwergel remembers them like this: “‘OK, now stick your arms out; I’m going to pour A on your left and B on your right.’ And then we’d test each other and put the same product on both arms. That’s when we knew we were getting burned out–when we started calling out differences between the same product.” One of Magnusen’s fonder recollections is of an experiment wherein he attempted to set Zwergel on fire to test the product’s flammability: “Some of our ingredients said that they were scorchable,” he says. “So we had Franz in the kitchen covered in Uberlube and I had my creme brulee torch and I went to town on him. And I was unable to light him on fire.”
They’re not secretive about the ingredients in Uberlube–there are only four and they’re written on the bottle: dimethicone, dimethiconol, cyclomethicone, and tocopheryl acetate. “We use really expensive ingredients,” says Magnusen. “There’s cheaper variations. The type of stuff we use is like five bucks a pound.” What they won’t give away is the proportions.
Not calling Uberlube a “personal lubricant” is also important to their strategy. When the guys are asked to describe the product, they call it a “sensual body solution.” “Uberlube is a really fine moisturizer used on the body,” Magnusen says. “You can use it for massage if you want.” Adds Zwergel, “We also knew that in the home–in the bedroom–people giving each other massages was a sensual thing that often leads to other things.”
