- Amazon recently opened its newest store concept, Amazon 4-star, in SoHo.
- It's the latest of several e-commerce-focused retailers to open up shop in that neighborhood, including popular retail startups Allbirds, Everlane and Casper. SoHo has become a place where e-commerce companies can test out their brick-and-mortar strategies.
- According to Nicole LaRusso, director of research & analysis for CBRE Tri-State, there are a few reasons that brands keep choosing this neighborhood, including the fact that rents are relatively low.
- We went to SoHo to see for ourselves how prevalent this trend is.
Amazon opened its newest store concept, Amazon 4-star, in New York's SoHo neighborhood on Thursday.
The store, which carries only Amazon's top-rated products, opened its doors on Spring Street, where many e-commerce companies have been testing out their brick-and-mortar strategies.
Allbirds, once an online-only retailer known for making "the world's most comfortable shoe," just opened up its first permanent flagship store in SoHo.
They aren't the only stores to do so. In the past year, it seems like more and more online-only stores have been opening up in downtown Manhattan. Retail startups like Everlane, Allbirds, Casper, and others which started as e-commerce only brands have been opening up their first physical retail stores in SoHo and surrounding neighborhoods like NoHo and Nolita.
"Being in the SoHo neighborhood makes our brand experience accessible to New Yorkers, and also to visitors from around the country and the world," Allbirds told Business Insider. "Our first SoHo store was a concept store — it was meant as a learning opportunity for us and a way to interact with customers in our largest market."
The neighborhood tends to draw a lot of startups that are willing to invest more in their physical stores, according to Nicole LaRusso, Director of Research & Analysis for CBRE Tri-State. She explained to Business Insider that SoHo attracts sophisticated and thoughtful millennials that these brands are targeting. What's more, the varied mix of brands in the area keeps the shopping experience interesting for customers.
This wasn't always the case. Between 2010 and 2014, there were countless empty storefronts in SoHo. Rents were high, and shoppers were starting to shift towards online shopping instead of shopping in physical stores.
According to data CBRE shared with Business Insider, rents began to drop in early 2016, and e-commerce startups began filling the spaces either permanently or as pop-ups. In some cases, like with Everlane, stores will start out as a pop-up shop, and if the shop is successful, the brand will move in permanently.
We recently went shopping in SoHo and saw for ourselves how prevalent this trend is:
To track rents and study real estate trends in different parts of NYC, CBRE divides the city into neighborhoods, and then divides each neighborhood into different corridors.
In SoHo, there are three main corridors CBRE looks at: Prince Street ...
... Spring Street ...
See the rest of the story at Business Insider