Final week, I noticed the unhappy information that one in every of my favourite outlets was closing its doorways after 22 years of enterprise. Lulu’s Cuts and Toys, which bought children’ toys and haircuts, was a mainstay within the Park Slope neighorhood of Brooklyn. I haven’t got any kids of my very own, however Lulu’s was all the time go-to vacation spot for my nieces’ and nephew’s birthdays and last-minute child bathe foraging. The place was filled with delicate, shocking issues — a comfortable haven for distinctive and nostalgic discoveries: cute vegetable pun onesies, the basic whoopie cushion, stretchy rubber rainbow-colored ramen noodles, assorted Harry Potter wizard wands, and many others.
The enterprise introduced its closure with a observe taped to the window (and its digital counterpart, a put up on Instagram), signed by the proprietor Brigitte Prat, and her daughter Lulu, the shop’s namesake. It learn, partially:
As a single mom and first-generation American, this neighborhood shouldn’t be solely the place I grew my enterprise’s roots, it’s the place I raised my daughter. Given the continued development of big-box on-line buying (Amazon, and many others.), it’s sadly not viable to maintain our small enterprise thriving with a storefront.
We hope this serves as a reminder to assist small companies locally. Their merchandise could also be $1 or $2 greater than Amazon (however usually, they’re cheaper!), and in trade, you get customized customer support, extra native jobs, extra revenue circulating throughout the neighborhood (and out of multi-billionaires’ arms), a buying expertise that’s higher for the surroundings and a neighborhood that seems like a neighborhood and never a company strip mall.
