The Gentrification of Sex Toys

Erotica celebrates sex. It comprises more than 200 stalls selling titillating products, from rubber corsets to sex toys, hot tubs to adult holidays. As visitors wander past stalls with names that leave little to the imagination - such as Bondage Heaven and Babes'n'Horny - they can watch raunchy floorshows and test the latest designs in furniture for sadomasochists.

However, Erotica is not simply the refuge of Britain's kinky minority: the festival may just be the new face of Middle Britain. In fact, the festival attracts more visitors per square metre than the Ideal Home Show, according to its organisers.

Erotica is proof that - now more than ever - sex sells. And trade in the erotic is becoming mainstream.

Most visitors are homeowners, almost one third are married and 40 per cent have a degree, according to an exit poll carried out at last year's event. Half of the visitors come from households with an income of over £30,000 - above the national average - and the most commonly read newspaper among female visitors is the Daily Mail. The average amount each visitor spends on products is a staggering £195.

"You couldn't tell Erotica from a shopping mall," says Davis Edwards, secretary of the Adult Industry Trade Association (AITA), a trade body representing the adult sector.

Now high-street retailers are getting in on the act. Last week Debenhams, the department store, said it will start to stock sex toys later this month. Boots, the health and beauty retailer, is also considering selling a range of sex toys.

Specialist adult shops are booming. Ann Summers has 120 UK stores and plans to have 150 by the end of 2005 and Peter Stringfellow, owner of the eponymous nightclub, has just opened an online store selling all manner of erotic items.

So what is behind this explosion? "There has been a sexual revolution on the high street. Women have taken control of their sex lives and are comfortable buying sex toys," said Jacqueline Gold, chief executive of Ann Summers. Her chain alone sold 2m sex toys last year, the most popular being the Rampant Rabbit vibrator.

A Boots spokesman said that the days when adult shops were associated with seedy back streets are gone. "In reality, this is becoming a much more common thing on the high street. A healthy sex life is considered to be everybody's right these days," he says.

Boots has entered into discussions with SSL, the maker of Durex condoms, about developing a line of vibrators and other so-called marital aids, although as yet nothing is definite.

All age groups appear to be enjoying the new sexual revolution. Sam Roddick, the founder of Coco de Mer, a London shop that she describes as "an erotic boutique and a luxurious curiosity shop of pleasure", says that women of all ages - including a large number of post-menopausal females - are buying vibrators.

"Most people think that the liberated are the young, but it's absolutely the reverse. Sex is a journey. The older you are, the more you know," she says.

Roddick - whose parents founded the Body Shop chain 25 years ago - says sex is no longer an embarrassment to customers or businesses. She says that many "major department stores" have approached her asking if they can sell her products, but she has declined.

Coco de Mer, which sells everything from a £12 feather tickler to a £2,700 "tally ho" bondage bench with stirrups, has branched into erotic "salons" and talks. Themes range from "The Art of Striptease" to "Introduction to Japanese Rope Bondage". Some of its racier-titled talks are over-subscribed.

"The talks give a sense of pleasure and a sense of information," Roddick says.

But as well as a liberalisation of attitudes towards the sale and use of sex toys, there is another reason why retailers are piling in. "The bigger retailers are going to be attracted to the margins in our industry," says Dale Bradford, the editor of Erotic Trade Only, a business-to-business trade magazine for the adult industry that started up 18 months ago.

Bradford says that the margins on vibrators and other sex toys are "more generous" than in other areas of retail. There are no figures for how much the adult industry is worth because, for so long, it has been underground, but insiders put it at hundreds of millions of pounds.

"One of the things we are trying to push for is reliable research," Bradford says.

The fact that the adult industry also has a trade body lends it respectability. AITA's Edwards says that the body was set up a year ago and has already seen membership increase threefold.

"Our aim is to introduce good practice so that the customer has confidence in our members," he says. There is still a lot of ignorance about the difference between the legal adult industry, which deals with sex toys, adult fashion and legally classified videos, and the illegal sex industry, which includes prostitution.

To this end, AITA tries to help members convince sceptical banks and insurance companies that they are dealing with a legitimate, booming industry.

However, some executives in the adult industry are far from optimistic - or complimentary - about the mainstream retailers piling in to the market. Ann Summers' Gold is one of these.

"It was inevitable that other retailers would jump on the bandwagon. However, it is not as simple as just bunging in a couple of sex toys and hoping to see sales rise," she says.

"We have more than 30 years' history of building a business with our customers to make them feel comfortable about coming into our stores and buying lingerie and sex toys. I can't see anyone going into Boots and buying their haemorrhoid cream and a sex toy," she says.

Coco de Mer's Roddick believes it is a question of context. While Boots might fulfil a functional need by selling sex toys, she says, its stores lack any hint of sensuality, which may put shoppers off.

"It's not exactly the most playful place to look at sex toys. It's about romancing the soul and making people feel good about themselves. I don't know how Boots is going to do that," she says.

A Boots spokesman says the retailer is looking at three issues before it decides whether to stock sex toys. These are how customers will react to seeing vibrators next to the toothpaste, how the goods will be packaged and where in the stores they will be sold. Boots will do nothing "tasteless or tacky".

He also refuted a recent newspaper report that accused Boots of betraying the ideals of its founders by considering a move into the adult toy market. He insists that Jesse Boot, the son of the retailer's founder, was a "progressive" individual.