Sh! Women's Store |Ky Hoyle
An 18-month campaign | 30 reported articles | 23 reported backlinks
A specialist retailer can have a great deal to offer journalists beyond the products it sells. Its founder may have a story worth telling. Its team may be able to explain a subject that readers find difficult to discuss. Its products may be genuinely relevant to shopping features, buyer guides and round-ups.
Sh! Women's Store had all three opportunities. The women's sexual-wellbeing retailer approached our team to raise awareness and strengthen its wider online presence. The campaign combined the story of founder Ky Hoyle and the store's 30th anniversary with practical expert advice and relevant product publicity.
The original campaign account records 30 articles and 23 backlinks during an 18-month engagement. The current Published Press archive contains 22 surviving records, not necessarily the complete record for the original period. We therefore use the historical campaign figures as reported outcomes and link to the surviving evidence below, rather than retrospectively lowering the results because an older database is incomplete.
The business: thirty years of a distinctive retail idea
When Ky started Sh!, there was a bigger story behind the business than an online shop. The brand was built around offering women a place to explore products and information relating to sexual wellbeing in an environment where they could feel informed, respected and comfortable asking questions.
That gave the store a strong identity in a crowded consumer market. It also created several different conversations with journalists. The founder had an entrepreneurial story. The team had specialist product knowledge and experience of common consumer questions. And the store's 30th anniversary was a genuine editorial milestone.
For a niche retailer, media coverage can help put those elements together. An anniversary feature may introduce the founder's motivation and history, while an advice article makes an expert useful to a particular reader. A product feature can reach people actively comparing options. Those outputs serve different audiences, so it is useful to pursue them as complementary opportunities rather than expecting every journalist to tell the same story.
The challenge: making a specialist store relevant across the media
Sh! wanted to strengthen brand awareness and support the discoverability of its website. The subject matter was specialist, and editorial approaches had to be sensitive to publication, audience and context.
A business feature could explore the store's history, entrepreneurial decisions and changing consumer attitudes. A lifestyle journalist might prefer informed responses to a practical sexual-wellbeing question. A shopping editor needs accurate product information suited to a particular roundup.
Our task was to establish which parts of Sh!'s expertise and story would add useful information to those different articles. That meant building a campaign around credible contributions rather than repeating a promotional description of the store.
We also had to make it straightforward for journalists to work with the right person. Founder Ky Hoyle was central to the anniversary and business-story element. The historical archive also records expert contributions by Renee Denyer in features about product use and broader sexual-wellbeing questions.
Strategy one: give the founder's story a timely hook
A store reaching its 30th anniversary offers a clear starting point for a retrospective story. It invites questions about what the business looked like when it began, why it existed, what has changed, and why it continues to matter.
The archive includes April 2022 coverage in the Daily Star, The Mirror and ATV Today associated with the anniversary and founder's story. These articles did not simply announce that a shop had reached a milestone. They provided a reason to introduce the business through the experience and perspective of its founder.
For editorial purposes, that matters. Readers may be far more interested in why someone opened a specialist women's store, and how attitudes have changed over thirty years, than they are in a direct invitation to visit a shopping website.
The founder story also provided a way to build wider context around the brand. It made the store's experience and heritage visible without relying only on product claims.
Strategy two: offer useful specialist expertise
There are many questions about intimate wellbeing that readers want answered carefully and without judgement. Publications covering health, relationships and consumer lifestyles frequently seek knowledgeable voices who can explain products and behaviours in accessible language.
The campaign presented Sh!'s experience as a potential source of practical commentary. Historical examples include articles about understanding different kinds of products, first-time consumer questions, product care and changing trends.
Woman & Home featured the business or its expertise across several topics, including choosing products, storage and future trends. Men's Health and Cosmopolitan also drew on related specialist commentary, reaching different readerships.
This type of PR has a longer life than a single announcement. When an expert offers useful, factually grounded advice, journalists can see the relevance of contacting the business again for a different topic.
It is not the same as guaranteeing that a publication will recommend a product or include a website link. Each editor retains control over the format and final article.
Strategy three: make product publicity editorially useful
The campaign also pursued opportunities to introduce suitable products through relevant reviews and round-ups. That called for a different approach from founder interviews.
For shopping coverage, the starting point is what a reader is trying to compare or understand. A useful contribution could be accurate category explanations, product attributes or expert advice about what makes a particular option appropriate for different preferences.
The surviving archive includes contributions around beginner-friendly product guides, product kits, quieter designs and other consumer shopping topics. Publications such as Woman & Home, Expert Reviews and Good Housekeeping provide examples of the kind of consumer-facing editorial environment the campaign reached.
The results reinforce why product publicity works best when matched to real editorial needs. Listing products indiscriminately is less persuasive than having a credible source who can explain a category and respond to a relevant brief.
The coverage: business stories and consumer expertise together
The historic records show a campaign with several independent strands, rather than one repeated press release.
The Mirror and Daily Star: The founder and anniversary features introduced Ky and the business through personal and entrepreneurial storytelling. The April 2022 archive provides an early example of national attention around a genuine milestone.
Woman & Home: Repeated articles covered consumer questions, advice and trends, demonstrating how a specialist spokesperson can be relevant to practical features as well as shopping content.
Men's Health: The archive contains features in May 2023 that used sexual-wellbeing expertise for a male readership, showing that the brand's knowledge could help readers outside its primary retail market.
Cosmopolitan: Articles later in the historical record covered relationship and wellbeing questions, further extending the type of publication and audience approached.
Good Housekeeping: A later March 2024 record about quieter products is part of the wider surviving historical archive. We show it as later evidence without asserting it was necessarily delivered inside the originally reported 18-month campaign period.
This distinction is important when working with an older campaign. The complete reported performance and the currently retrievable article records are related sources, but they are not the same dataset.
Results: 30 articles and 23 editorial backlinks reported
The original historical campaign summary records 30 articles and 23 backlinks secured over 18 months. Those remain the reported campaign results.
The live internal record currently allows us to document 22 historical coverage entries under variants of the Sh! brand name. Twenty-one have an article URL and one has an archived image but no article link. Some surviving entries extend beyond a likely 18-month window and are retained as historical context instead of being quietly treated as part of a precise campaign-period measurement.
We cannot derive a reliable campaign-wide change in search rankings, web traffic or online sales from those article records alone. The public value documented here is earned editorial visibility, identifiable expertise and links recorded in the historical client account.
A separate published coverage table records all current supporting source articles, with dates and publishers, so readers can explore the evidence rather than relying on a headline number.
What Ky said about working with the team
Ky's historical client feedback particularly praised how quickly national coverage began and how calmly the work was managed.
“In our 1st month, we're in 3 national newspapers and more importantly it's all been done calmly, with no stressy, urgent messaging - using our dedicated Monday board to keep up with enquires is a breeze...”
“Highly, HIGHLY recommended.”
- Ky Hoyle, founder, Sh! Women's Store
These are verbatim extracts from the original review supplied for the case study. They are not rewritten as a fresh review for the Fair PR brand, and we do not include an unrelated comparison with other businesses from the longer original review.
| Date | Publication | Article or Topic | Read Article |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2022-04-17 | ATV Today | 30th anniversary | Read article |
| 2022-04-19 | Daily Star | 30th anniversary | Read article |
| 2022-04-21 | The Mirror | 30th anniversary | Read article |
| 2022-04-26 | Zoella | Picking a sex toy | Read article |
| 2022-06-26 | Fabulous Daily | New sex toys | Not available |
| 2022-07-24 | Woman & Home | Rose sex toys | Read article |
| 2022-07-31 | Silver Magazine | Orgasm Day tips | Read article |
| 2022-08-17 | Woman & Home | Storing sex toys | Read article |
| 2022-10-04 | Daily Star | Fisting | Read article |
| 2022-10-12 | Woman & Home | Vibrators | Read article |
| 2022-10-19 | Woman & Home | Sex toys for beginners | Read article |
| 2022-12-10 | Woman & Home | Sex trends for 2023 | Read article |
| 2022-12-13 | Woman & Home | Best sex toys for orgasms | Read article |
| 2022-12-15 | Expert Reviews | Best sex toys of 2022 | Read article |
| 2023-02-04 | Woman & Home | Sex Kits | Read article |
| 2023-05-03 | Men's Health | Best chair positions | Read article |
| 2023-05-04 | Men's Health | Foursome positions | Read article |
| 2023-07-04 | My Imperfect Life | Whether Vibrators Can Affect Clitoral Sensitivity | Read article |
| 2023-07-20 | Cosmopolitan | Coital Alignment Technique (CAT) | Read article |
| 2023-08-14 | Woman & Home | Best Vibrators | Read article |
| 2023-10-06 | Cosmopolitan | Sex Positions in the Tub | Read article |
| 2024-03-03 | Good Housekeeping | Quiet vibrator | Read article |
Images from the coverage
Why the approach worked
Sh! combined a newsworthy business history, a founder who could explain that history, and subject-matter expertise relevant to a wide range of media questions.
The 30th anniversary made the story timely. The team's knowledge gave lifestyle journalists practical commentary. The store's product range created additional opportunities in shopping coverage.
Those three channels made the campaign more resilient than relying on one pitch. Each had a distinct editorial purpose, but all built a larger public record of the brand, its people and its expertise.
This is a useful model for consumer brands with a strong point of view. The product is only one part of the media story. Founder experience, reader questions and genuine business milestones can matter just as much.
Results at a glance
| Measure | Result |
|---|---|
| Campaign length | 18 months (original campaign report) |
| Reported articles | 30, from the original historical client/campaign account |
| Reported editorial backlinks | 23, from original historical campaign account |
| Surviving Published Press entries | 22 records, including one later-dated 2024 entry and one record without a linked source URL |
| Campaign themes | 30th anniversary founder story, expert sexual-wellbeing commentary, consumer buying guidance and product features |
| Publications evidenced | The Mirror, Daily Star, Woman & Home, Men's Health, Cosmopolitan, Good Housekeeping and others |
| Client review | Authentic historical feedback from Ky, with only complete clean verbatim excerpts used in public copy |
Frequently asked questions
How did Sh! Women's Store approach PR over 18 months?
The campaign combined founder and business storytelling linked to the store's 30th anniversary, informed expert commentary about sexual wellbeing, and appropriate product-led publicity in consumer publications. Different angles were developed for different editorial audiences.
How many articles and backlinks did Sh! report?
The original historical campaign summary records 30 published articles and 23 backlinks during an 18-month engagement. The currently accessible Published Press archive contains 22 supporting entries, including a later 2024 record. It is not a complete substitute for the original campaign report.
Which kinds of publications covered Sh!?
Examples in the surviving archive include The Mirror, Daily Star, Woman & Home, Men's Health, Cosmopolitan, Expert Reviews and Good Housekeeping. Their roles varied, from founder profiles and anniversary features to practical expert advice and shopping content.
Can a specialist consumer retailer use PR without relying entirely on products?
Yes. A retailer may have a compelling founder story, a milestone, unusual experience of its category, or expert knowledge that helps explain common customer questions. Those are separate media opportunities from product round-ups and need different pitches.
Building wider visibility for your consumer brand
Consumer PR works best when it connects the real value of a business with the information journalists want to publish. For a specialist retailer, that may mean a mix of founder profiles, expert comment and relevant product features.
