The owners of Vin Sur Vingt Wine Bar have soft-opened their new retail wine shop, Le French Wine Shop by Vin Sur Vingt, at 161 Amsterdam Avenue at 67th Street. The space was formerly home to Tower West Cleaners.
The new shop will carry an all French selection inspired by its wine bars (two of which are located on the Upper West Side – 66 West 84th Street and 100 Riverside Boulevard). Right now, the owners tell us they’re waiting for more wine to be delivered, and they’re hoping to be ‘officially open’ by the middle of next week.
The shop is currently open from 12pm-8pm daily.
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We’ve also heard from our tipster ‘Upper West Sider’ that skin care company Malin + Goetz has secured a lease at 100 West 72nd Street – the space which was formerly occupied by the Swatch store. Signage indicates a spring 2022 opening.
How often do you need to buy a watch?
I need wine weekly.
The entire concept of paying rent to maintain a store for infrequently-purchased goods seems idiotic even in “normal” times.
How often do you buy clothes, weekly? Shoes? Furniture? And yet there are stores for these things along with other jewelry and watch stores. They seem to do ok. The problem with Swatch was that the brand is no longer popular.
The Malin + Goetz location on Amsterdam is almost always empty. I wonder if this newer and bigger location will do any better.
…and those places raise prices accordingly to pay the rent. That’s why the internet is killing the old business models of having to maintain a specialty store for infrequently purchased items. e.g. everyone needs shoes, not everyone wear a watch anymore because there’s one on their phone. Same goes with paint and mattress stores — if you’re not going to be buying the items at least annually — the stream of customers is not going to allow you to maintain a brick and mortar location. It makes no sense. That’s why paint is at Home Depot instead of a standalone store.