Hubby made £15k sex toy!
We can help My brainy hubby learned bondage is big business
Hannah Collins, 24, Accrington
As a hairdresser, you wouldn’t believe the goss you get from customers. One minute they’re popping in for highlights, the next, they’re telling you about their neighbour’s affair with the milkman! It made me pretty unshockable.
But what one customer said to me in June 2011 had me lost for words.
‘I want my hair dyed blue,’ she said.
Not that blue hair is so shocking these days. But her reason for wanting it dyed?
‘Because my master says so,’ she announced. ‘Your what?’ I stammered. Smirking, she told me all about the kinky world of BDSM (the abbreviation for bondage and discipline, dominance and submission and sadomasochism).
This customer was a submissive who did everything her so-called master told her to, including wearing a locked collar.
‘He’s got the only key,’ she smirked, tugging the padlock.
We had an enlightening chat about what they got up to… Whips, chains, you name it!
When she was done telling me all her naughty secrets, she asked me about my life.
I mentioned that my partner Colum, 20, was a blacksmith and had his own business making metal gates, fences...
‘So he’s good with his hands?’ she winked. I let out a little giggle. I thought nothing more of it until two months later when my kinky customer asked if Colum could make something for her. ‘He’d be happy to,’ I said. She invited me and Colum round to discuss it further.
So a few weeks later, we went to her place, met her husband – who was also her master.
‘Would you make us a new spanking bench?’ they asked.
Colum and I glanced at each other. A what?!
The couple led us to a locked room. Inside were cabinets full of all kinds of sex toys, collars hanging from the walls.
It was like the red room in Fifty Shades Of Grey!
‘Our old one is broken,’ the hubby said, pointing to a rickety wooden bench with metal wrist restraints. ‘I’ll give it a go,’ Colum said. Back home, the pair of
us couldn’t stop talking about what we’d seen. ‘I feel such a prude!’ I laughed. But Colum had an idea. ‘There’s a whole new market here,’ he said.
So he started doing research, realised there was a demand for metal cages, collars and cuffs from the BDSM community.
‘I reckon it could boost business,’ Colum said. And I agreed. But for the next few years, real life got in the way, so the idea was put on the back burner.
We married in May 2015 and had two beautiful kids.
But the business was struggling... So, in May 2016, we decided to start making kinky products.
‘Let’s call it Hidden in Plain Sight,’ I said. ‘So we make things that look normal, but have a secret, kinky function.’
Now a mum, I worried about people’s kids stumbling across things they shouldn’t. But if we made beds, benches and stuff that looked normal, but held kinky secrets, business would boom.
I threw in the towel as a hairdresser, started working behind the scenes for What Nobody Knows, the name of our entire BDSM business.
Colum brainstormed ideas. A bed that had secret storage for whips, sex toys. A piece of artwork that unfolded into an X-shaped frame with wrist and leg restraints. ‘Let’s do it,’ we agreed. Colum began making a few collars and cuffs, set up a website to advertise our goods, and slowly but surely our kinky caper started taking off!
The collars and cuffs became our biggest sellers, but soon people were asking for bespoke items.
‘I’ll need you to be my guinea pig,’ Colum grinned. Gulp!
So when he was asked to make a metal cage, I had to get inside to make sure it was big enough!
Soon I was helping test out all sorts of things to make sure everything was safe and sturdy.
I’ve stood on tables. Been propped up on X-frames. Even had collars measured around my neck for size and weight.
It was fascinating – and, yes, a bit exciting.
But, for us, S&M is strictly for business, not the bedroom!
Now we’re getting quite a following. We ship a lot of things to France and America. It was never a world we saw ourselves getting involved in.
People can be very judgemental when we tell them. But we don’t let it bother us. We work hard, keep our kids innocent from it all, and we’re happy.
It’s a different kind of day job. But we couldn’t imagine doing anything else.
The bed had secret storage for whips and sex toys