Play Kinky certainly has a distinctive look and feel, unlike any other sex toy retail site I’ve come across before, the layout, design and colour palette are bold and uncompromising. The home page consists of a full-screen slider, currently with a Christmas theme alongside the less seasonal and more pragmatic information about the site such as the promise of discreet packaging for their range of adult gifts, consumable and toys.
Scroll down the page from the massive slider and you reach first the major product sections of girls, boys and couple’s toys (also available from the header menu) and news stories from “Kinky Times” an online and print publication that hints at the origins of this new and unusual approach to online sex toy sales. The company have a background in design and PR with a great effort being made to create and incorporate sex toy and adult content in the site as well as the usual spiel about the products being sold.
Even down to the product images the site differentiates itself from other retailers by each product being set on a graduated purple-pink background instead of the more usual isolated white. If you like the visual style of this site you’ll really love shopping here but maybe because hot pink is not my colour, or perhaps because I’m more blokey that I gave myself credit for I didn’t go wild over it. Yes I have to give it credit for being an uncluttered, easy to use and easy to navigate site, and yes apart from loading the slider images it’s fast and doesn’t stutter as some sites do when you switch pages. My only real gripe visually (apart from the colour palette not being to my taste) is what appear to be drop shadows behind product images or are they Piet Mondrian style elements? Whatever it’s a minor criticism of aesthetics and again down to my own personal taste.
All products have a textual description and “Key Information” tab too so you know what you’re getting and if you need to stock up on a certain type of battery! Like a disappointed child on Christmas morning the last thing you need is to run out of power in the middle of me-time. Purchasing the products is achieved via a handy little widget that, where applicable will allow you to select colour or other variations for the basic item. The range of products is small in comparison to other online sellers partly because Play Kinky are a new player but also because the items on offer have been selected for the store – while they range from the reasonably priced to high-end products Play Kinky have avoided stocking the tacky products that litter the inventory of some other online sex stores.
Although I can’t shake the feeling that the store is aimed at women and women shopping with their partners rather than men shopping on their own there is a reasonable range of male products. All of the products are recognisable brands, not generic copies with indeterminate pedigree in terms of quality. So, you aren’t overwhelmed by choice but what is available comes from trusted names which can make choosing easier.
Once you have decided to purchase you can view the items in your basket at any time from the header menu and from there on to a secure checkout. As you’d expect when the package arrives at your door it is discretely packaged and even your card statement will show “PK Retail”. The item we selected came in a plain box, and held in place by shredded paper, more appealing than the polystyrene “Quavers” or “Flumps” that many stores use and of course, biodegradable/recyclable.
The “Kinky Times Magazine” section of the site underlines the publishing heritage of the company with regular updates about the site and
the sex toy world in general. Other online sex toy sites do this but not with quite the emphasis that Play Kinky give editorial. Of course the articles are to encourage you to buy both directly (pointing to specific products) and indirectly by making you think about what you get up to in the bedroom.
The printed version of the magazine is a well produced, quality publication that, again, we have never seen the like of before from a sex toy store. It is “perfect bound” rather than stapled, the cover finished in a quality heavy card that you would never find on a magazine, colourful and glossy throughout. The Kinky Times provides you with insight and ideas about how to spice up your love life and of course hints towards which products you could use to help you achieve this.
Play Kinky have to be given credit for being different but it is of course the consumers who will eventually dictate if their unusual approach to sex toy retail will attract consumers.
Store review, online sex store, adult store, online adult store