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| The Ripped Bodice, Culver City, Calif. | |
Later this summer, romance-only bookstore the Ripped Bodice will open a second location, in Brooklyn, N.Y.
Store co-owner Leah Koch, who co-founded the original location in Culver City, Calif., with her sister, Bea Koch, seven and a half years ago, will run the Brooklyn store. Bea Koch will remain in L.A., and the Culver City store will continue to operate as normal.
The new store will reside in a 1,900-square-foot space at 218 5th Ave. in Park Slope and offer the same selection of diverse and inclusive romance titles spanning a wide variety of sub-genres. The store's event offerings will include author signings, book clubs, writing workshops, with Koch looking forward to hosting and working with many more East Coast authors. There is a grand opening celebration planned for August 5, with details to be announced.
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| Ripped Bodice's future home in Brooklyn. | |
Koch is hard at work on the store's buildout, describing the process as "pretty serious construction." The space previously housed a pet store that had not been touched in about 15 years. Koch has stripped out everything she could and "ripped down two different ceilings," and the floors have had to be entirely rebuilt. Still to be done, she added, are things like ductwork and painting.
Asked for how long a second location has been in the works, Koch recalled that when she and her sister opened the store, they agreed there would be "absolutely no discussion of expansion" for at least three years, as they wanted to make sure the business was established and did not want to make the mistake of expanding too quickly.
In January 2020, with the Ripped Bodice doing well after around four years in business, the sisters felt they were "reading to start looking." They spent a few weeks browsing real estate websites and "then the world ended." Koch remarked: "Thank God we didn't sign anything."
With the start of the Covid-19 pandemic, expansion plans immediately went on "deep freeze," and it wasn't until around August 2022, with the L.A. store "back to almost full strength," that they were ready to start thinking of it again. Koch started putting some pieces in place, such as promoting one of the store's booksellers to be manager of the L.A. store, and mapping out a timeline for an expansion.
Koch explained that opening a second store in L.A. was never really under consideration, and the idea was always to expand their reach and their audience by opening in a different city. Though Koch and her sister had identified "a variety of cities I think we could be successful in," the choice was really down to Brooklyn or "another big city on the West Coast." (Koch declined to name the city, saying the Ripped Bodice may still expand there eventually.)
What "really sealed the deal," though, was Koch's brother and sister-in-law having a baby in February. While visiting them in Brooklyn, Koch took some time to look at real estate and "found something amazing." With either city seeming like a "good business decision" for the store, opening in Brooklyn was a better personal choice for Koch. She's spent the last several years living very close to one sibling, she added, and now figured "it was time to give the other sibling a shot."
In addition to the buildout work, Koch will soon be hiring staff for the Brooklyn store, with applications set to open on June 20. "We're excited," she said. --Alex Mutter