“We are THRILLED to announce that we signed our first lease and will be bringing FRUITLOOTS to our hometown of West Hollywood,” reads a post from the official @heyfruitloots Instagram account. “The vision of Fruitloots is to be on the forefront of Queer Retailing and this first step is the beginning of many more to come. See you in the fall West Hollywood.”
The popular gift-giving website claimed it was moving to 7990-7992 Santa Monica Boulevard (sandwiched between Laurel Hardware and the former home to Fubar). The 1,740 square foot retail space was built in 1950 according to LoopNet. The space has been pretty much empty since 2016. It’s had a random pop-up over the past years. The last retail store at that space was LA Jock which opened some time in 2014 to 2016 (before that, it was a bird store called For Birds Only, which shared the space with Kim’s Nail Salon).
It turns out the entire post was a hoax and was later updated as an April Fools joke.
The space at 7990-7992 will continue to be vacant until a serious business takes over the space, and from the looks of it, Fruitloots will remain online.
Founded by best friends David Cruz and Allan Nugyen, Fruitloots is an LGBTQ+ owned and operated ecommerce gifting marketplace based in West Hollywood, offering a whimsical twist on modern gift-giving. David is the founder of Finding Cupid and a former matchmaker from BravoTv and WeTv, and Allan has a background in corporate retail merchandising.
The idea for Fruitloots was born out of the pandemic when David and Allan wanted to send a box of fun goodies to their friends to celebrate Pride and were disappointed by the overseas-made trinkets available on Amazon. It became the company’s core mission to showcase vendors from LGBTQ+, POC, women and ally-owned brands by featuring these products in their gift assortment.
What do you make of the hoax? Does it make you want to shop and support this business? Or does it make you not take them seriously?
Well, they got free press out of it and I’d certainly never hear of them before this so I guess, in this case, they win.
Usually an April fool’s joke is supposed to be absurd and humorous. This was neither. Just seems like they wanted free publicity.
I would have checked them out in person, but now I don’t have any interest in them.
How stupidddddd
I think they announced this was a prank!
https://www.instagram.com/heyfruitloots/
HAHAHA!!! Thank you. I was going to take the story down, but decided to update the piece to dully note the prank. I’m game for a good joke, but from a business perspective, all these guys did was bring attention to the fact that they are not growing into a storefront and will most likely continue to run their business from their living room. They got us real good.
Great News!