Love in the age of e-commerce

Valentine's Day is the best time of the year for the erotic industry, including online. Online shopping platform Shoper examined what lovers buy each other as gifts for February 14.

After Christmas, Valentine's Day is another harvest season for retailers. Americans spend $15 million on chocolates alone during this period. Interestingly, in addition to typical romantic gifts such as jewelry and flowers, customers are increasingly buying erotic gifts during this period. According to data from online shopping platform Shoper, from December to February, traffic in erotic e-shops increases month by month - Polish retailers' revenue in January this year was as much as half the average revenue in the second half of 2016. And in the first week of February, erotica e-shops on the Shoper platform recorded three times more transactions than the average per week in the previous six months.

- The entire period between Christmas and Valentine's Day is the industry's peak season. In the last four weeks before the holiday of lovers, traffic in the store increases twice. Such a situation occurs every year," explains Rafal Gronecki from the erotic store Figlarni.pl.

Grey's legacy

On Valentine's Day, we don't scrimp on gifts for loved ones - it's when we choose more expensive, better quality, more unique products. Among the Valentine's Day bestsellers from the first week of February were vibrators, massagers and stimulators, as well as lingerie and erotic clothing, including bodystocking, thongs, stockings and sexy dresses. 7 percent of orders were BDSM accessories and items, such as handcuffs, whips and blindfolds.

- Among Valentine's Day purchases, next to vibrators, geisha balls reign supreme. This has been a permanent item on the list of gifts for several years," calculates a seller from Figlarnia.pl. The popularization of vaginal balls, used by women to exercise their Kegel muscles, was significantly contributed to by the success of the book and movie "Fifty Faces of Grey." In the United States alone, after the release of the bestseller, sales of vaginal balls increased by 300 percent, and the trend can also be seen among Polish consumers.

Condoms online

The most popular product purchased in erotic accessories e-shops are condoms. In the first week of February alone, they accounted for 60 percent of orders and more than a quarter of stores' revenues, and their large share of sales can also be seen in previous months. The anonymity and lower prices prevailing online clearly encourage people to buy this type of assortment online, without having to deal directly with the seller at the checkout.

- Online erotic stores are popular because they guarantee discretion - the customer can browse products on a computer or phone screen in peace, read the description and features without witnesses. It's also an industry that offers increasingly designer and better quality products, and their popularity will continue to grow as society opens up to novelties in the intimate sphere, notes Tomasz Tybon, director of marketing and sales at Dreamcommerce, provider of Shoper online store software. - The current customers of erotic stores are modern and conscious people, with them in mind, the sellers take care of the aesthetic and elegant appearance of the site, not referring to the aesthetics of a kitschy sex shop, Tomasz Tybon adds.

It is important for erotica e-shops to maintain customer discretion and anonymity, such as offering delivery to parcel machines, from where the customer will pick up the package himself and avoid picking it up at work or at home, and not putting a large logo on the package. The world is liberalizing, but it's important to keep in mind that often the customers of such stores are residents of smaller towns where there are no stationary stores with erotic gadgets, and if there are, everyone in the area will quickly learn about a purchase there. More and more erotic stores are being created on the Shoper platform, which proves this, the interest of consumers in accessing sex toys online.