Gotham Quilt which is located in Midtown Manhattan has decided to be an online-only store and classes.
Read the press release
The Next Phase of Gotham Quilts
We celebrated our 9 year anniversary in August, hard to believe!
In these 9 years we’ve already had several “phases” of the business: we started out online-only with our inventory in a mini storage unit, then we had our “studio” in an office, and then the “retail store” phase we’re currently in.
Business, like life, is always full of change, and if you don’t adapt to the changes, you go out of business.
No one could have predicted COVID happening in 2020 or how midtown Manhattan would not recover after the acute shutdown phase, but that’s the reality we are in.
Many factors are working against midtown businesses right now, everything from work-from-home (midtown is where most New York office workers used to commute to) to loss of international tourism & business travel to a major shift to buying online… it’s a bad time to be a retail store in midtown Manhattan.
If you’re been in our store in the last 3 years, you were likely the only one shopping when you were here. A few months ago we switched to only being open for in-person shopping 3 days a week, and even with the reduced hours, the store is mostly empty when we’re open. If you’ve signed up for a class, you probably then found out it was canceled due to lack of enrollment.
On the other hand, because of the initial pandemic shutdown, we figured out how to expand our online offerings with virtual retreats, lectures, and subscription programs like Stash Society. Our customers continue to shop with us online, attend virtual events, and sign up for subscription programs.
And that’s why today, we’re announcing the next phase of Gotham Quilts:
By the end of the year, we are closing our brick-and-mortar store.
We will again be online-only like we were at the beginning, but with many more ways to interact with you, including vending at select events.
Our lease ends at the end of December but we don’t yet know when our last day of in-person shopping will be, it will depend on how the store closing plans go and how quickly we sell out of stock that won’t follow us to the new phase.
Read more on: https://gothamquilts.com/en-gb/blogs/news/announcing-our-next-phase
