Shakespeare & Co. will close two of its bookstores in New York City. West Side Rag reported that the shop at West 105th Street and Broadway is being shuttered just a year after opening because of weak sales, while the company's East Side store on Lexington Avenue is also closing, "with the lease ending and the landlord there looking for higher rent."
 |
|
| Shakespeare's Lincoln Center store | |
The Lincoln Square location at 68th Street and Broadway, which is paired with a cafe, remains open and thriving, according to Dane Neller, one of Shakespeare & Co.'s owners. He noted that the company does not have plans to open new stores in the area at this time, but "there's always opportunities, so we're open and careful and we look at things as they come along."
Neller said the company had tried hard to make things work at the Upper West Side location: "It was a really great landlord, a wonderful community. Love the neighborhood, love the customers, [but] we just weren't able to get to the sales level we needed to make the store sustainable."
He added that the loss of revenue from the East Side store also meant that it was harder to sustain the West Side space in the face of competition from online booksellers, fixed price points, and "a lot of costs keep going up--labor cost and rent cost--so there comes a point where you just can't make it work."