Swiss online retailers focus on toys for adults
What Digitec Galaxus has had in its range for some time, Microspot.ch and Brack now also offer: Sex toys. The market is booming - and the traditional sex stores are suffering.
With the expansion of its range, Microspot.ch also enters the sex toy business. How the SonntagsZeitung in its current issue, the online retailer has also been offering 700 sex toys and contraceptives since last week. The newspaper writes that the Coop subsidiary has "quietly" expanded its extensive range to include this area. The reason is obvious: the market for sex toys is booming in Switzerland.
Brack.ch also says it meets a customer need to be able to buy such products online.
Market leader Digitec Galaxus is already much further ahead: The Migros subsidiary stocks no less than 16,000 erotic articles in its range and has been managing this area since 2014. For good reason: Growth is developing exponentially, says spokesman Alex Hämmerli to the SonntagsZeitung - sales in this division have almost doubled in each of the last few years.
On average, buyers at Digitec Galaxus are 32 years old, and vibrators are particularly frequently purchased as a gift before Christmas.
The fact that the adult industry has shed its grubby image is paying off. The online stores of providers like Amorana or Amoreli look like beauty or wellness sites and no longer have much in common with the appearance of earlier sex stores.
At Amorana, 55 percent of customers are female and sales are growing by 30 percent every year, according to company boss Lukas Speiser. And the erotic retailer reveals something else: In Switzerland, the country buys more than the city - the people of Obwalden and Schwyz spend the most on sex toys. 23 percent more than the national average. This contrasts with the people of Basel, who spend 30 percent less than the average and bring up the rear.
Not everyone is happy about this development: the classic erotic markets are in a crisis. Market leader Erotikmarkt has already closed six stores, entrepreneur Patrick Stöckli believes it is a matter of time before the remaining locations are also no longer profitable.
The fact that vibrators can now even be bought in Coop and Migros supermarkets is likely to accelerate the demise of conventional sex stores. Customers no longer have to buy the corresponding items in conurbations and at freeway exits, but put them in online shopping baskets or in their shopping carts quite incidentally.
