Shopping At A Sex Shop

Think Of It Like Regular Shopping

They just want the best for you: No one should feel nervous approaching a sales assistant to ask for help. We’re here to sell you the best items, the same way someone in an electrical store would – just with slightly more intimate products. So there’s no harm in simply going up to the sales assistant and saying, ‘Hello, can you tell me about this product? Is it safe to use in this kind of sex act?’ For us it’s just another product to sell and inform you on. 

Feel free to touch: If you go into general pants or jay jays, you want to come in and touch the materials and look at the colours. It’s exactly like that. For people who work in sex shops, we don’t necessarily see the toys as sex toys, more like beautiful objects. It’s like handbags or shoes.

Say what you want: Broach it like you would when you’re going shoe shopping i.e. ‘I’m looking for a pair of black heels, can you show me what’s around?

Do Your Research

Why do it? Doing your research beforehand is a good technique, so you can come in knowing some of the key terms and what they mean. Then you can come in feeling a lot more confident and less nervous.

What should you look for? The trick is to find someone who is objective, because a lot of the time using a sex toy is very subjective. What works for one person might not work for another person. So look for reviews that talk about quality, battery length, and if it’s waterproof, rather than someone who just says, ‘Oh, this toy doesn’t know where to find my clitoris.

We’ve seen a real shift in sex toys being featured in the media too, which is great for shedding the taboo around sex toys!

Scared Of Sex Shops? 

You’ve read the articles about designer sex toys. You’re cool enough to admit your love life could use a little something. Perhaps something mechanical. But you go into a sex shop Never.

Yes, shopping for that first sex toy can be intimidating. It’s like buying your first bra, or car: You need one, but you’re not quite sure how the thing works and you’ll be damned if you’ll admit that to the salesperson. 

 People avoid sex shops for plenty of reasons, and most of them are wrong. The taboo around shopping at an adult store is outdated and just plain immature. 

Sex Shops Are A Safe Space

Unlike some retail outlets that tend to give off a one-size-fits-all vibe, sex shops are an individualized, judgement-free zone. I got into the field because when I was researching sexual fantasies, I found that women didn’t feel comfortable expressing their interests—partly because they didn’t know what their interests were or they were concerned about looking like sluts.

There’s No Need To feel Nervous

Those fantasies that you’re kind of embarrassed about (but shouldn’t be) are more common than you might think. A 2015 study published in The Journal of Sexual Medicine, for example, found that sexual interests traditionally considered taboo are actually totes normal: Researchers surveyed 1,516 Canadians between the ages of 18 and 77 and found that 65 percent of women fantasize about being dominated sexually, while 44 percent of men fantasize about spanking or whipping a partner for sexual pleasure.

If you’ve never purchased a sex toy, suggests thinking about what kind of sensations you enjoy and how you want to use a sex toy. For example, If you’re shopping for a vibrator, do you like internal or external stimulation or both simultaneously? Thick or thin? Curved for the G-spot or smooth and straight? So basically, know where you want to put it and how you want it to feel.

The exact same advice to her potential customers. If you’re interested in penetration, think penetrative. Narrowing it down makes it a lot less cumbersome than looking at a whole wall of things. Since most stores are organized along these lines, having a desired sensation in mind can take you right past that goliath dildo giving you the stink eye and into a section that won’t make your face as red.

Ask the experts

Why don’t they judge? Chances are we’ve bought it for ourselves already. It’s like anything else, if you work in a shoe shop, you want all the shoes. If you work in a sex shop, you want all the toys.

The sex toy industry is a weird and wonderful one, so we’ve probably already heard it (or worse). Very little fazes us.

Opening up helps: One we hear very often is, ‘I’ve never had an orgasm.’ A sentence like that might be difficult to say, especially to a stranger, but once you’ve said it, you’ll realise it’s not going to raise our eyebrows – we’ve probably heard it many, many times before.

Just make sure you know what you’re doing: Sometimes you see customers buy things and think, Oh god, please use that correctly. But you’d never judge, because everyone’s sexual preferences are different.

 But there is a limit

There is such a thing as too much detail: The things I know about some of our customers! Sometimes it’s because they’re nervous and just share more than they intend to. It only becomes a problem if the oversharing is part of their getting off. We get phone calls sometimes from people going into explicit detail about how they’ve used toys, and it’s clear they’re using it as a means to an end. We don’t want that.

They’re human too: Lots of people will ask if we’ve used things before, and how we use them, and it’s a personal question for some sales assistants. It’s hard to find the right balance answering that question, as just because we work in a sex shop doesn’t mean we want to put our sex lives on display.

They still don’t judge: Sometimes customers will say things that make you blush. I once had a customer come in who was buying a vibrator for his mum, and it took me aback. From a professional point of view you can’t know everyone’s set of circumstances, so you can’t judge, but there are things that you will hear that might take you a minute to process.

It’s so much more than sex toys

You wouldn’t be wrong in assuming the job is nothing more than selling vibrators and recommending ribbed condoms, but even though a sex shop worker will probably have squeezed more dildos than the average person has in their lifetime, it’s not enough to lob one at a customer and call it a day. Denyer explains that empathy is essential: ‘I meet women who’ve never had an orgasm, or who have survived sexual violence. It is my job to make them feel comfortable and safe when they visit the shop, and offer solutions or products that’ll be helpful to them.’ There’s an emotional resonance for customers looking to indulge their sexual side, thanks to our culture’s penchant for repression and sex shaming, part of the job is helping people – women in particular – reclaim agency of their bodies and take control over their sexuality.