The honest truth
When Ky Hoyle set up her women-friendly sex shop in London’s East End 30 years ago, she wanted to break some taboos. She’s still making waves, writes Tanya Pearey
It was a brief, handwritten thank-you note from a customer, but it meant the world to Ky Hoyle. It read, ‘Thank you. After three children and 20 years of marriage, I’ve finally had an orgasm!’ The letter came at the beginning of Ky’s business venture, but she’s kept it safe over the past three decades so she stays focused on exactly why she set up her sex shop: ‘To help women understand that they have the right to sexual pleasure – and showing them how to achieve it.’
‘The toys are secondary,’ explains Ky, who is in her 50s. ‘Without sounding too saintly, we’re not really about flogging sex toys, we’re more about trying to give people permission to explore their sexuality. And women particularly have needed that, especially when we first opened.’
The idea for Sh!, the UK’s first womenfriendly sex shop, was sparked after Ky’s failed trip to buy sex toys in the 1980s. ‘It was the most horrible experience,’ she recalls. ‘Everything was very malefocused, the male fantasy of what women wanted, not what we actually wanted.’
Spurred on by the memory of dark and dingy Soho sex shops, with intimidatingly large and graphic toys, and shady men in dirty raincoats, Ky raided her £700 savings to open altogether different premises in London’s Hoxton. The emphasis was on women’s pleasure, but it was difficult to source stock to reflect this ethos, so the company started making its own – not so successfully at first. ‘We made an awful lot of dildos that were little better than dog toys in the early days,’ laughs Ky.
It was far easier to create a welcoming atmosphere in the shop, with soft lighting and friendly, non-pushy female staff. Every visitor was offered a cup of tea to ‘give them something to do with their hands’. ‘It helped them relax and opened up the conversation,’ recalls Ky. ‘They could put it down when they felt confident enough to pick up the toys. You need to feel these things, and hear them too. Our toys were never in boxes or locked away in glass cabinets.’
If you’ve never bought a toy before, Ky advises you ‘start small and inexpensive. Find out what sort of sensations you like and you can always upgrade.’ So how do they choose what to stock? ‘We cherry-pick,’ explains Ky. ‘There are more than 300 rabbits – even I’d wonder where to start!’ Instead, the company selects toys based on USPs. ‘For example, this one’s super quiet, this is extra slim, this is best if you like this or that…’ she explains.
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