Sex shop
An early precursor of the modern sex shop was a chain of stores set up in Paris in the 1920s by Léon Vidal, the founder of the lingerie manufacturing company Diana Slip.
[citation needed] The development of sex shops in the country was assisted by the legalisation of the import of pornographic magazines in 1971, the appearance of mass-produced battery-powered vibrators in the 1970s and the arrival of X-rated videos in the 1980s.
The popularity of Internet pornography in the 2000s resulted in a drop in sex shop sales, some store closures and diversification into non-sex-related adult goods.
While laws differ between states, licensees must abide by strict conditions that commonly require premises to be at least 200 metres from schools and churches.
[citation needed] Under NSW law, non-contraceptive sex products can be sold only in shops that have been granted a restricted premise licence by local councils.
Nevertheless, by 2013, a number of NSW lingerie stores had begun selling adult toys and books in shopping malls without being granted a licence.
The Palm Beach Post commented: "Like the chicken or the egg controversy, no one is really sure which came first-the sex boutique or the so-called sexual revolution".
[citation needed] Beate Uhse-Rotermund started selling contraception information by mail order in 1946, and she opened her first shop in 1962.
The first Hungarian sex shop opened on 15 November 1989, before the end of communism in Hungary, at 14 Károly Boulevard in Budapest, under the name Intim Center, which still exists today.
[citation needed] The first sex shops in the Netherlands were opened in the early 1970s, by entrepreneurs like Beate Uhse and Lasse Braun.
[13] According to Milonov, it is necessary to introduce control over the distribution of intimate goods: "The use and application of such products will occur exclusively as prescribed by a doctor.
These shops mainly sell lingerie, condoms, BDSM tools, genuine enhancement pills, tenga items and various sex toys.
The adult movie star Christi Lake attended the opening of the shop, where a protest march of over 500 people brought traffic to a standstill.
When the shop was opened, it was found that 70% of the customer base were women who wished to learn more about adult lifestyle products.
In the district of Soho within the City of Westminster a handful of sex shops were opened by Carl Slack in the early 1960s, and by the mid-1970s the number had grown to 59.
[24] There followed purges of corrupt police officers, along with new and tighter licensing controls by the City of Westminster, led to a crackdown on illegal premises in Soho.
[citation needed] Zoning regulations often caused shops to be located either on the outskirts of town, or clumped into a single area, creating a type of red light district of adult stores and businesses.
[citation needed] In addition, during the late 1980s and early 1990s, stores that also had theaters or arcades were sometimes closed by government order, citing the spread of AIDS as the motive.
[citation needed] On the other hand, there are stores that evolved specifically out of a sex-positive culture, such as San Francisco's Good Vibrations and Xandria.
The latter class of stores tend to be very consciously community-oriented businesses, sponsoring lecture series and being actively involved in sex-related health issues, etc.
