The 2008 Sex & Entertainment Fair was touted on billboards across Mexico City as 300,000 square feet of “pure sex,” an erotic twist on Mexico’s chaotic market culture and affinity for spectacles. The event itself was just as splashy as the advertising. There were acres of booths selling lubricants, sex toys, and cheap lingerie. Near a stand offering “hot hangover tea,” a striptease took place on an elevated stage. A male Aztec-themed stripper wearing an oversize headdress, diminutive chaps, and gold body glitter wandered the halls between stints at one of the “table dance” tents.

More surprising than the wares were the demographics. According to the 2008 C.I.A. World Factbook, three of every four Mexican citizens are Roman Catholics, yet among those who paid the $16 entrance fee were middle-aged matrons, twittering teenagers, and suited men on their lunch breaks. In a country where machismo rules, 45 percent of attendees were women.

When the show’s owner, Mexican entrepreneur Alberto Kibrit, inaugurated the country’s first-ever sex-industry trade fair in 2004, “talking about sex was completely taboo in Mexico,” he says. “The issue and the industry were very closed.” But now, as he and other entrepreneurs are quick to point out, the adult-entertainment industry is an increasingly respectable sector for small-business owners in Mexico. A decade ago, Kibrit hoped to be a politician. A few career detours later, the 26-year-old now has power and a leadership position in a changing society—as the founder and C.E.O. of Entretenimiento Masivo.

As the first person to gather Mexico’s adult-entertainment business owners for a public trade event, Kibrit is a pioneer in an industry with a considerable audience. Wham Picture, Mexico’s largest purveyor of video pornography, estimates that the country’s adult-entertainment industry, including pornography and erotica, raked in $1.1 billion in 2005. (Forrester Research estimates that the U.S. adult-entertainment market sells $15 billion yearly.)

Before Expo Sexo, Kibrit had tried launching a real estate expo two years earlier with his father, a real estate agent. After its tepid reception, he proposed they produce a similar fair with a sexier subject; his father promptly washed his hands of the affair. Left to his own devices, Kibrit produced the first Sex & Entertainment Fair with one investor, who fronted $15,000, and some hefty credit-card debt. He collected 40 exhibitors from around the city, managed to draw a startling 80,000 attendees, and made a profit from the $10 admission fee. This year, the number of exhibitors mushroomed to 205, and about 117,000 attendees bought tickets over four days—generating 10 million pesos (just under $1 million) in profit for Kibrit’s 20-employee company.

Kibrit, who doesn’t look or sound any older than his 26 years, says that age aided his success. Like many young Mexican men, he wears preppy, button–down shirts with jeans and slicks his hair with gel. “People didn’t see me as a gangster,” he says. “They don’t want to see a big guy with gold chains surrounded by beautiful women. Being exactly the opposite has made things much easier for me.”