We sat down with Helen Shepherd, manager of Sinsins Boutique of Love in Norwich City Centre. We met in the shop itself, surrounded by a colourful array of weird and wonderful sex-positive objects. This created the perfect environment for us to talk openly about what running a sex shop is really like, and to reflect on the broader ways in which sex impacts our society and its culture. 

Introduce yourself! What is your business, what is Sinsin’s? 

Okay, well, I’m Helen, I took this shop, Sinsins, which is a Norwich institution, about seven years ago. It’s been here about 21 years. I was at the time an artist belonging to the guild of erotic artists. I had an exhibition in the old shop, which is how I was in the area, and then I just took it on when it became available. 

[At this point, a regular came in to buy poppers.] 

Would you say that poppers are your most popular product? 

I’ve got lots of them. Yeah, I’m somewhat of a connoisseur. I spend a lot of time on Reddit, ‘popper pigs’. Like, it’s a difficult one because obviously, I try not to sell them. You’ll probably see me not sell them if you stand there long enough. Because if people don’t know what they are, I’m always going to say [no]. I’m never going to promote these, invite you to have these. Like, we can’t even really discuss what you do with them. Yeah, it’s, you know, it’s a difficult thing. But like, you know, my customers are grown-ups, yeah? And, you know, they know what they do, but yeah, I’ll talk at least one person out of buying them a day because they’re not good for you in any real sense. You know, they serve a purpose. 

It seems from your website and shopfront that inclusivity and activism is important to your business. What’s the philosophy there? Do you find that marginalised groups are a big audience for you? 

I’ve got ‘trans friendly’ on the window. I’m kind of like, part of pride every year. It’s a really important thing, especially in this current world, I think, to to push back. When I took the shop on, it wasn’t doing very well. I think perhaps the previous owner hadn’t understood the way the world had moved on, and it was still all painted pink, with this bunting. It was like: ‘you can’t call it a sex shop’. The world has moved on and become more sex positive. Norwich, especially, is, like, an incredibly, maybe not like, racially diverse city, really, but in all kinds of other ways, it’s a very diverse city. So, when I took it on it had virtually nothing in it, over these seven years, it’s become the shop that Norwich wants. Not only that, but it’s a neurodivergent shop, all the staff and customers, lots of customers, are neurodivergent. It’s a different vibe here, I think, than it was before. 

Do you view your shop as a form of allyship to the queer community? 

Well, I myself and all my staff consider ourselves queer one way or another. we’re all in that kind of melting pot, you know. If you were to stand here, you’d see everybody. People really do consider it a safe space. Like, that’s pretty good. It’s a good place to come and know that you’re accepted and able to ask questions that you perhaps wouldn’t be able to ask somewhere else. This is one of the last surviving independent 

shops like this in the country. It makes a difference, like, because I am this shop. This shop is me. I live and breathe it. This is what my veins look like. You know, I’m viscerally a part of it. It’s like a Stephen King novel, the shop lives, and I live to serve it. Feels very much like that. 

It does say ‘shop open for over-eighteens’ out there. That is really key. On Saturdays you’ll get idiots come in. Middle aged, straight men come after the football. Nothing I can do about them. 

Would you say that a lot of your clientele are singles? 

It’s really everybody. I do get singles coming in. The way that the history of it has gone, obviously, Anne Summer did its thing about 20 or 30 years ago, and women got used to talking about sex toys with their friends and stuff. Men are kind of moving slower and still have a little bit of shame. 

But like, I mean, I’ve got like, a couple who come in who are in their 80s, still buying stuff to help them move things along. You then have young people who come in in big mixed groups, which is amazing to see you know, where it’s like, no problem at all going through stuff going ‘I like this!’. That feels like a development over this last 20 years. 

Where do you think that shame comes from, especially with single men? 

Just like, past times, and the judgmental world that you can see around you. It’s quite a worrying time in history right now. So, you’ve got the weight of that, that’s hard to manage. I’ve got men come in and they go: ‘Oh, I’ll never compete with that’. And I say: ‘You’ve got to think of it as a teammate, not as competition!’ 

I’ll talk openly to some people, and then I’ll have people who’ll come in, and I can see them mostly over there [behind a display], waiting for everybody else to go before they’ll come and talk to me. It’s still kind of difficult to have a sort of proper openness, I think guys would make fun of other guys, whereas I think that really doesn’t happen with the women. Shy people, that’s a different thing. Shyness is a different thing to shame. 

What do you love about running an adult shop? 

I love the problem solving. I love finding out new things. I have ADHD, so I love opening the parcels. I love doing thousands of pounds worth of orders, and then, opening all the boxes. 

I do own the shop next door as well. [Elysium – alternative clothing and accessories] I did a few days there and I didn’t love it. I like this because it feels much more useful, much more rewarding, much more important. Like a guy came in last week, his wife had a motorbike accident, she’s like ‘gone’ from the neck down. A lot of examples like that, 

where people have gone to the doctor and tried to talk about the sexual part of their relationship, and been shut down. It feels like a good thing to be doing. Like, you know, the guys come in from other countries where the things aren’t quite as open and as here. They’ll think that they have got to have this, and they’ve got to have that. I sort of send them out, I tell them: ‘you’re alright, just go and be nice’! 

Many venue readers are interested in fashion and culture – do you see more bdsm/fetish gear in fashion in 2025? 

Yeah, I suppose. Because, I used to have the underwear in here, and then obviously I started the new shop, and there’s definitely harnesses going into everyday wear. That’s the main thing, I think. The harnesses, which would have been in the back room, now they mix seamlessly with the stuff in the front room. You have the other kind of ‘party wear’, it’s not far off some of the fashion stuff in the rest of the shop. 

Do you like that sort of fashion? 

Yeah, I used to do art. I used to take the pictures and do the papers and everything. So, I’ve always kind of had an interest in that whole scene, especially, sort of, visually. 

It’s great, you know, the real kind of crossover, like, you know, when you kind of start getting brilliant customers come in, all dressed up. They’ve got their ears on, and they’ve got their tails on, properly dressed up in a mixture of things. That’s absolute joy to me, when they come in here, like ‘Oh god, look at you go!’ 

Do you have any advice about sex, relationships or toys for Concrete’s readership? 

I would say there’s a few things to work out. That’s how the shop works, it’s organ based rather than gender based, but there’s a little wonderland in the middle where there’s toys for everybody, toys that can be used by everybody, likes for massages and stuff… 

It’s really about knowing your anatomy in the first place. That’s a really important part. People come in and they just don’t even know what’s where, or what they’re supposed to be aiming for. Work that out first. 

Toys have moved on so much, if you know what you want, you can work from what you want to achieve. Like, you know, not everybody wants a buzzy toy. Like, there’s toys which mix buzzy and a lower frequency for people who like, sort of, grinding. There’s the frequency, or the softness of something. People pick everything up, and somewhere you’ll go, yeah, that’s it. That’s the thing. You just kind of have to see the thing. There’s toys for everybody. There’s gaps being filled in in all kinds of ways. 

Like for example, for female to male trans people, finding a toy that works through the transition. There’s always going to be something there. I’ll pick two toys up, and one’s 

going really fast and one’s going really slow, I’ll kind of watch how they react to it and go: ‘Right then, we’ll go here, we’ll start here!’ 

They definitely don’t look like the toys that there were, like, 25 years ago, where there was a real, kind of basic… either a straight plastic thing, or a horrible, you know, not body safe thing. 

Do you think there has been a recent boom in sex toy technology recently? 

Absolutely. There’s always something new. I’m not an AI lover, really, but that kind of AI aspect is moving into things. I do the trade fairs in Europe. They sort of sat me down, and I had this whole headset on, and it was to show how, like, the masturbator would work. This girl whispered in my ear, and then she put her hand on my knee, and it was as real as real. They’re kind of working out that there are gaps to be filled, and every time they do something they get a little bit closer to ‘real’. 

Do you think AI is going to be a threat to your industry? 

Yeah, I’m a bit of a luddite, like I left items on the checkout this morning because there wasn’t somebody on the checkout. I’m one of those. I’m not frightened of computers, per se, or anything, but I think there’s a lot of threats through the supply chain. Like Amazon, there’s threats coming through to everything. There’s good and bad to the artificial nature of it, people are having like virtual girlfriends. There’s a lot, yeah, there’s a lot to worry about, for sure. I offer real talk, and expertise, and guidance. 

Do you think there are misconceptions about sex in the media? How do you think film, TV and books affect how we see sex? 

You know, 50 Shades didn’t really do a great deal of good. It’s just like, you know, whatever kind of sells, isn’t it? People like to judge; people like to laugh at other people. They’re just, they’re selling [media] to your Daily Mail readers, people who don’t want joy, and they don’t want anybody else having joy, not on any level. You’re always gonna have that. I can’t see that going away, really. 

Do you think the misconceptions about sex are helping to contribute to this sort of shame? 

Yes! 

Did you name the shop? What’s the story there? 

No, I didn’t actually, but It’s French for without – like ‘Sans Sin’. So, it’s called ‘Sinsin’, but it’s ‘San’s-Sin’ really. 

So, is the message behind that like – sex is without sin [not sinful]? 

Yes, exactly! I didn’t call it ‘Boutique of Loveee’ either, the amount of times you hear that from people walking past reading the sign, it drives me mad! I want to go up to the door and go ‘I didn’t name it!’ 

Did you want to plug anything so the readers can find you? 

Search for sin-sin’s, our Instagram is relatively active. It’s like, you know, you can’t promote anything because of the nature of the goods. I guess I’m preaching to the converted really. You know, if you follow me, then you’ll see my things, otherwise you never will, because it has to be over eighteens on everything. You know, it’s there! 

To find out more about Sinsins, you can find them on Instagram @sinsinsboutique. Or, their website is http://www.sinsins.com.

Photo Credit: Thomas Lewis.