Buy & sell an erotic online shop and sex shop

A classic city-centre sex shop lived on passing trade and video booths. That model is in decline in most towns. What is in demand today is a combination of a manageable sales area and a generous, dry storage area with a delivery bay, packing stations and parking for courier services.

For the property, that means level-access delivery, sufficient ceiling height, load-bearing floors, decent upload bandwidth, and parking. A set-back unit in a commercial zone is often better suited to this than an expensive high-street shop, and more discreet for customers who are collecting.

Currently on offer is a detached commercial building in Villingen-Schwenningen: 576 sqm of lettable space on a 1,064 sqm freehold plot, nine rooms, seven of them with en-suite bathroom and WC, plus a Finnish sauna, an XXL whirlpool, a cold-plunge pool, a bar, a club room, a cinema room, a mirror room, a covered inner courtyard, eight parking spaces and two garage spaces. The building has been run continuously since 1991 as a naturist sauna club and prostitution establishment and is free of existing leases or tenancies. Purchase price €848,000.

Trading in erotic products does not require a permit, but is subject to youth protection law: sale to adults only, no display visible to minors, age verification for mail-order sales of relevant products. For a shop unit this means privacy screening on shop windows and a controlled entrance situation.

Under planning law, a specialist erotic retailer is not classed as ordinary retail in many local development plans. Some municipalities specifically restrict it through entertainment-venue bylaws (Vergnügungsstättensatzung). Whether it is permissible at the desired location, and what is planned, is clarified by a preliminary planning enquiry, not by the fact that a shop already exists next door.

An established online shop is frequently offered for sale together with the property. These are two separate purchase items: land and buildings on one side, domain, shop system, customer data, supplier contracts and stock on the other. Both belong in separate contracts with separate valuations.

With the digital assets, data protection and contract transfer are the critical points: customer data cannot simply be sold along with the business, an asset deal needs a clean legal structure here. Turnover figures for a shop, without audited accounts, are not a reliable basis, and we do not carry them unchecked into documents.

Searches include buy a sex shop, sell a sex shop, take over an erotic shop, buy an erotic online shop, or erotic retail commercial property. Behind these are two very different types of interested party: the operator looking for a unit, and the buyer wanting to take over an existing trading business.

We keep the two cleanly separate. For the property, we prepare floor areas, delivery access, permit status and running costs; for a trading business sold alongside it, we recommend review by a tax adviser and specialist lawyer. We do not commit to turnover figures, that is a matter for the business, not the property.