Sh! Women’s Erotic Emporium celebrated its 30th birthday on April 1st with the launch of a Brief History of Sex Toys video. Generally recognised as the UK’s first sex shop for women, the multi award-winning business has been hugely influential throughout the last three decades – and it continues to be so today, despite now operating as an online-only business.
“We are thrilled to celebrate this huge milestone,” said Sh! founder, Ky Hoyle. “For three decades we have been helping women of all ages, backgrounds and sexual preferences to understand that they have the right to sexual pleasure, and showing them how to achieve it without shame or blame.”
Hoyle opened Sh! in 1992 with a £700 budget after a less than enjoyable visit to a Soho sex shop aimed only at men. Today, the influential sex entrepreneur and her team at Sh! are credited with helping an average of 500 women per week to have better orgasms.
Notable highlights from its history include bringing sex toys to the NHS, visiting Downing Street bearing a special ‘gift’ for the prime minister’s wife, being taken to court for supposedly breaking outdated obscenity laws (Sh! won), and introducing the UK to the rabbit vibrator, six years before its starring role on Sex and the City. You can read more about the history of Sh! here.
As well as winning numerous awards, Sh! has been at the forefront of life-changing campaigns to improve women’s sexual health and wellbeing. These include creating Vaginismus Awareness Day every September for sufferers of this little-understood condition and co-founding Café V, the UK’s first-ever support group for survivors of sexual violence to regain their enjoyment of sex. Sh!’s current collaboration with Macmillan Cancer Support aims to help women enjoy full sex lives while living with cancer.
Sh! is now an online business after closing its London premises in 2020 due to the Covid-19 pandemic, and in March 2021, it launched sister site ShushLife – ‘the sex education you wish you’d had’. The sex-positive platform harnesses three decades of experience to teach pleasure-enhancing courses and give tailored advice to the brand’s faithful customers — who include everyone from Hollywood stars to grandmothers from Kent.
“Incredible progress has been made over the past 30 years,” said Hoyle. “But there is still work to be done to achieve the goal of ensuring all women, transgender and non-binary people can enjoy safe and healthy sexual pleasure – and Sh! will be there to do it.”
