| The key intersection for The Bowery’s home lighting niche, which is about 50 years old. |
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| The Bowery Mission, a remnant of a famed, if unsavory, past |
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| Some home lighting shops on The Bowery 1 |
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| Some home lighting shops on The Bowery 2 |
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| Some home lighting shops on The Bowery 3 |
My initial thinking about retail niches was greatly influenced by my experiences shopping for antiques in Waynesville, OH and for lamps in shops along The Bowery in Lower Manhattan. It has been almost 50 years since I made my initial visits to these places. Their antiques and home lighting niches still exist, though they have changed over the years.
Waynesville is about 600 miles away, so I have not been there in many years. But, a few years ago, I did some telephone interviews. Though the antiques niche there reportedly remains strong, it has changed because the industry as a whole has changed. Two significant changes are: 1) a lot of merchandise is sold on consignment in large antique malls, where the dealers do not have to be personally on site and 2) internet sales.
The Bowery is much closer to home, about an hour away via public transportation. When I first visited the area, back in the 1950s, it was best known for its run down bars with cheap drinks, poor alcoholics down on their luck and a collection of flop houses. When I next returned to the area in the 1960s it was to look for lamps in a cluster of home lighting stores. By the late1980s, this home lighting niche had grown enormously, with most shops between Houston Street and Canal St seeming to sell home lighting merchandise. On a visit in the 1990s I estimated there were between 75 and 100 ships in this niche. My wife and I felt that too many them appeared to be indistinguishable from each other in size and merchandise and that consequently the whole niche seemed less attractive.
Since then the neighborhood has changed significantly. Property values have increased and so have the commercial rents. The Bowery is showing signs of gentrification. The cheap bars and SROs are long gone. Chinatown has expanded enormously.
The merchants have also changed. The number of home lighting shops is now back down to about 20 and they are clustered on a two block stretch going south from Delancey Street. A restaurant kitchen equipment niche has emerged.
The largest and best known home lighting shops are among those that remain. Though much reduced in numbers, the niche is still relatively strong. A 50 year run is not bad for a retail niche and it certainly is not yet over. The niche remains a regional draw for shoppers looking for home lighting.
I hypothesize that the contraction of this niche was due to a collection of factors:
- Rents became unaffordable for most of the small, marginal shops. Given the huge increases in Manhattan’s retail rents it is doubtful that the borough will ever again see a retail niche of the size this home lighting niche reached.
- Some shops just aged out — the owners retired and their businesses ended with their departures
- Too many of the shops could not differentiate themselves except on price — and many could not afford to compete in this manner
- A new niche was competing for the available retail spaces.
It is also fair to say that this niche has helped revitalize a badly decayed, disreputable area.
