PROVIDENCE — There was plenty of the standard trade-show fare: the nametags, the maps of area restaurants, the eager entrepreneurs.

But this, it was clear, was no standard trade show.

There were whips for sale at the Rhode Island Convention Center yesterday. Ropes, too. And from the owners of Long Island-based For Your Nymphomation: luggage specially designed to cart your sex toys from T.F. Green to LAX.

Welcome to the 30th installment of the New England Leather Alliance’s Fetish Flair Fleamarket — a semiannual gathering of stiletto-wearing transvestites, leather-clad bondage enthusiasts and smiling purveyors of America’s booming, multibillion-dollar trade in sex toys and videos.

Chalk it up to enlightened liberation or the decline of Western civilization, but the nation’s sex industry has come out of the shadows.

And the business, it turns out, is caught up in the same trends driving the rest of American enterprise: the rise of the Internet, competition from China and the growing appeal of high-end specialty products.

Take Monk, the one-named owner of twistedmonk.com, a Seattle-based retailer of fair-trade, organic bedroom rope finished with allergen- and animal-free oils.

“Cruelty-free bondage rope might sound like an oxymoron,” he acknowledged yesterday, wearing a black tank top that read “Trust Me, I Have A Merit Badge in This.”

But twistedmonk, he suggested, owes part of its appeal to the socially conscious approach that has powered companies such as Whole Foods.

And in five short years, Monk said, his Internet-driven company has moved to five full-time employees, from one, with health-care benefits and, starting soon, 401(k) plans.

But talk of retirement benefits is not the only indication of the sex industry’s move into the mainstream.

Across New England, and across the country, the sex-toy party is taking its place alongside the Tupperware party.

And Holly Rowe, a saleswoman for Woonsocket-based Athena’s Home Novelties, said she has made a tidy sum selling prurient products in the nation’s living rooms.

“It’s definitely grown,” she said of Athena’s, which is celebrating its 10th anniversary.

But for Nir Madar, president of Nashua, N.H.-based Rachel’s Pleasures, business is not what it used to be.

The wholesale company, which was a pioneer in the soft, stretchy bedroom restraints favored by the mildly adventurous, has watched sales decline about 50 percent in the last five years in the face of Chinese competition, Madar said.

The company, which has been in business for over 20 years, has slapped “Made in the USA” labels on its packaging in the hope of striking a patriotic chord with its shoppers.

But Madar said domestic manufacturers of sex toys could soon go the way of the textile or shoe industry.

“It’s very feasible that you become very customized or you go out of business,” he said. “It’s happened to a lot of industries.”

Just down the aisle, John Kolakowski of the Dungeonware Co., in Bristol, Conn., seemed less concerned about the foreign competition.

The Chinese might be churning out passable furs and plastics, he suggested, but they are falling woefully short when it comes to leather masks and belts.

“It’s junk,” he said.

Overall, Cecilia Tan, founder of the Fleamarket, seemed bullish on the American sex-toy market.

Bondage, discipline, domination, submission and sadomasochism — better known as BDSM — has begun to make its mark on popular culture, she noted, with growing references in film and commercials.

“It’s just a little bit edgy, which is eye-catching,” she said. “But it’s open enough that people can say, ‘Oh yeah, that’s out there.’ ”

And while conventions of the pornography industry such as the AVN Adult Entertainment Expo, held recently in Las Vegas, draw a mostly male crowd, Tan said, the audience for the Fleamarket is more balanced along the gender lines.

That broader appeal, she said, is changing perceptions about BDSM and boosting business.

This weekend, in the Fleamarket’s first foray into Providence, organizers expect to draw 125 venders and more than 4,000 attendees by the time the three-day convention finishes this afternoon.

Both marks would set records for the event, which also includes classes, demonstrations and a masquerade ball.

“The sex-toy industry,” Tan said, “is really on the rise.”

dscharfe@projo.com