This L.A. shop was cute before cute was cool. It launched on TikTok, and things got ugly

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Set us as preferred The little L.A.shop was a destination for Hello Kitty fans for decades when it decided to dive into a massive new wave of e-commerce — peddling its products live on TikTok.

The first floor of the JapanLA store in Fairfax is full of stuffed toys.It houses shelf after shelf of cute Japanese characters such as My Melody, Totoro and Kuromi.

Upstairs is the real moneymaker.Employees stand in front of phones, pitching the hottest new products of kawaii (cute in Japanese) culture.

While the upstairs business has brought in tens of thousands of new customers, it has also attracted trolls trying to shut JapanLA down.The haters have hacked the store’s website, harassed its hosts, spread rumors about its owner, and threatened to show up in force in front of its physical store.

JapanLA owner Jamie Rivadeneira says she has never seen cute consumers turn so ugly.“I created JapanLA 20 years ago for adults who like cute stuff, so they can feel safe and feel like it’s OK to like toys and collect them,” she said.

“To attack me is so opposite of what I stand for.”It is a cautionary tale that points to the potential profit and pitfalls when small local businesses push back against the onslaught of e-commerce by using technology to reach a wider audience.It also demonstrates how the Labubu craze — in which people keep buying blind boxes of the same toys in hopes of getting a rare, expensive one — has turned some shops into casinos.Rivadeneira was ahead of the curve when she opened a small toy shop in 2006 on a street off Melrose Avenue selling items featuring Hello Kitty and other Japanese characters.

From its early days, the store, called JapanLA, harnessed the internet to promote its products, using MySpace to connect with what was at the time a niche community: Los Angeles fans of kawaii culture.As it...