Layoffs at Nortel have led to the launch of a new sex toy company in Ottawa.
Standard Innovation Corp.'s first product, the We-Vibe vibrator, has sold 55,000 units worldwide since it was released last spring 2008.

Bruce and Melody Murison, both former Nortel employees, launched their "research and design" company after Murison was laid off from the now-struggling telecommunications technology giant five years ago.

Bruce Murison, who worked as a Nortel engineer for more than a decade, said the We-Vibe was designed from an engineer's perspective. The 60-gram silicone device is U-shaped and is the product of six years and $500,000 worth of research and development.

"This is, to me, not a sex toy. It's an electromechanical device," he said. "We truly look at it from a scientific point of view; in terms of plotting the x-y charts of power versus performance, versus the third dimension of the human dynamic: What frequencies do women like?"
The couple said they came up with the idea while on a long car trip in 2001. The topic of sex toys came up.
"And it was just an innocent idea — why isn't there a sex toy that fits between two people when they're making love?" Bruce said.
He jotted down the idea, did some searches and found that nothing similar had been patented.
In 2003, he was laid off from Nortel and had some time to pursue his new research, and from there the We-Vibe was born.
"It's phenomenal," says Liz of Madame Rouge. The We-Vibe has been our fastest selling product to date!
"We've never, ever seen a toy sell like this after just stocking it we ran out and had back orders and requests for more stock lining up."
And good news is on the horizon with the developers of We-Vibe now turning their hands to a new design using NASA technology!
Bruce of Standard Innovation Corp. says "I discovered some technology developed by NASA that has never been applied to the sex toy industry," he said. "So we've got a new technological platform we're going to be rolling out over the next two years."
So look out Australia, there’s likely to be more of this coming your way within the next 2 years.