About Fantasy Gifts®
Actually, What You Do In Your Bedroom, Is Our Business?
Bringing the BEST of the Sexual Health Products, Lingerie and Novelties into your home!
Since August of 1980 we have specialized in the most up to date and popular sexual health products and gifts such as vibrators, dildos, anal play toys, personal lubricants, stunning women?s lingerie & accessories and menswear. Going to pause for a moment this was getting to be a really long sentence, ok let?s continue, restraints & bondage, education materials, massage oils and fun novelties. A healthy sex life is an important part of the human experience, and at Fantasy Gifts we have always carried items that cater to all genders and orientations. Special occasions and events such as a bachelor or bachelorette parties, anniversary or birthday parties or simply a romantic evening for yourself, you will find what you are looking for at Fantasy Gifts® stores and even more at Fantasygiftsmn.com.
The Beginning?
Original Fantasy Gifts® Store
Fantasy Gifts® began in a small second story novelty gift shop in Nicollet Mall in downtown Minneapolis and my dad was the only employee. He would sit near the window and yell down to folks who couldn’t find the store as he could they were confused as to where it was. One day in early in the year 1980 he was so sick he had to stay home, and the store was closed but it was the perfect day to be sick. He turned on the TV and found the Phil Donahue Show, and Phil’s guests that day were the manufacturers of what was then called “adult toys” and they were being interviewed about the products and the history of each company. The women in the audience were not appalled but instead wanted to know where they could find the products and not be hit on, or have their feet stick to the floor or have to listen to the sounds of 25 cent movie booths. Well, it took just a few minutes for my dad to grab the phone and track down the companies and soon he and my mom were pouring over paper catalogs of products they barely knew existed a few days before.
The program showed my Dad where to get the products but it was the women of Minneapolis who told him what to buy. He started with some simple items and the customers started to ask for more and it just grew and grew and the demand for products was amazing, they didn’t know what half of the requests were, but they figured it out, ordered the items and with two-day UPS delivery the happy customer got what they wanted. Each time my Dad learned about a type of product he would order more figuring if one person was brave enough to ask, more folks probably wanted it too. The merchandise outgrew the space and in August of 1980 he moved the store to Hennepin Ave and Fantasy Gifts® was born.
The Middle . . .
In just a few years he added two more stores. One in the Lyn/Lake area of Minneapolis and the other was in St. Louis Park. He and my Mom decided she would leave nursing and work with him full time. In 1989, my brother and I graduated and joined the business and a few years later, my sister. It was the easiest interview ever! For the next decade we have moved or opened a store over 40 times! We now have 8 locations in the following cities: St. Louis Park, St. Paul, Fridley, Bloomington, Burnsville, Crystal, Coon Rapids and Lakeville.
My parents decided to go back to my dad’s hometown and got bored with retirement and started opening stores in New Jersey. Sometime in the mid 1990’s, we started taking orders online and started this website. A few years ago, again because of customer requests, we began home parties in the Twin Cities., but have since discontinued them as the requests stopped and online shopping is so much more popular. My parents did them in the eighties, but the Midwest wasn’t quite ready for them then. They tried baking naughty cakes too; nothing funnier than over hearing your parents deciding on chocolate shavings or sprinkles to represent pubic hair although maybe choosing naked model greeting cards with your mom comes close.
Today . . .
My Brother and his wife run two beautiful stores in New Jersey in Turnersville and Marlton and my sister, Mom and I run the stores in Minnesota. My Dad passed away in 2008 and he is very much missed. We have an amazing staff in both states that do an amazing job managing the stores. The buying department has grown from just me and my Mom with just a few companies to an entire staff with hundreds of companies and vendors. The products in the store are still influenced by customer requests but we also have a staff that has been with Fantasy Gifts® for years and they have good relationships with all the manufacturers and know good products from crap. We have seminars for our staff several times a year and have over 40 social media sites to help keep you informed about what is going on at Fantasy Gifts® In 2015 we launched a podcast called Great Northern Sexcast to continue our outreach and education efforts, we had to shut that down during the pandemic and it has been too much to bring it back but it was fun to do and the episodes are still available if you are curious. We participate in local events such as Pride, Crypticon and other venues with donations and pop-up stores. Our full-time employees have health, dental and an option for an IRA plan, so when you shop at Fantasy Gifts® you know where your money is going.
We built a whole new local website in less than two weeks in the spring of 2020 when everything was shutting down due to the pandemic to serve our local customers and I even did home deliveries for about a year, we had an order 30 minutes after it went live! The third generation of family is almost all over 18 and the over 18-year-olds are helping out, and my niece in law has joined the biz too!!
The Future . . .
It is our goal to continue to provide sexual health products in a fun, clean and comfortable shopping environment, both in our brick and mortar stores and online. To provide information about those products in an honest and non-judgmental atmosphere and continue to fight misconceptions about the items we sell and the people who use them. We will continue to have an all-inclusive approach to our customers, and with our employees in our merchandise selection and hiring practices. While we may use humor to promote our stores and products, we are very serious about your right to legal adult items and the First Amendment issues surrounding them. How serious? Well almost all of the family has been arrested at one time because of outdated and unconstitutional laws. We win in court and you win because you have access to the sexual health products you want.
To all of you, from all of us at Fantasy Gifts® - Thank you for shopping a local and family run business, we very much appreciate it!
The Bertino Family
Owners of Fantasy Gifts®
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