Art Browns Has Closed

[swanjun]

Wow. I actually just talked to them on the phone earlier this week and managed to get in an order for Brooklyn Brawn just a couple of days ago!

[Fleetlord]

They probably dumped their inventory to a former competitor for pennies on the dollar as a bulk buy rather than deal with the sloooow creep of a drawn out closing sale..

 

Some manufacturers may have bought their inventory back to keep it from being sold too cheap. That happens sometimes in the watch industry...

[georges zaslavsky]

They probably dumped their inventory to a former competitor for pennies on the dollar as a bulk buy rather than deal with the sloooow creep of a drawn out closing sale..

 

Some manufacturers may have bought their inventory back to keep it from being sold too cheap. That happens sometimes in the watch industry...

Indeed like Omega who was dopping several of the Tourneau stores and other retailers to developp their own boutiques to grab some market shares against Rolex

[Fleetlord]

Indeed like Omega who was dopping several of the Tourneau stores and other retailers to developp their own boutiques to grab some market shares against Rolex

 

Exactly...The pen inventory went somewhere....maybe multiple spots...Montblanc / Cartier may have bought it back. Dunhills are all over the place grey market, so they prolly went to Jomashop..lol

 

Just speculation here guys. We may never know what happened to the "Art Brown" inventory...

[Bultaco]

Did someone mention the FPH moving? Please tell me that they are not also in jeopardy. Living in the Mojave desert, where Wal Mart has killed all the unique B&M stores makes me treasure FPH more than ever. Little chats with Jimmy are priceless... The kindness and warmth this shop demonstrates every day is immeasurable. Without FPH and UPS, I would surely perish.

[LWJ2]

That's a shame, the big box retailers have driven the small, customer-service oriented shops out, leaving the mass market of Bics for everyone. I buy at my local hardware store whenever possible simply because the Orange Borg and the Blue Borg have no idea what "special order" means. The local art supply store here has cut back inventory and moved it's printing division into what had been strictly artist supplies (with a few pens, mostly for lettering) a while ago. I'm hoping they can hold on, because that will leave me with Michael's as a source of pigments if they go under. AFAIK, the nearest pen shops are in Richmond, the Norfolk/Newport News area or metro DC -- three to five hours driving distance for me. The one store that carried decent pens here folded years ago.

[wallylynn]

 

I never did get to meet the Browns since (as I was told) that they take the weekend off.

Glad I have my Manhattan Blue, but sad I don't have the Legal Blue.

[welch]

While I'm sad to lose the Browns from the B&M community, I'm not really comfortable with the anti-capitalist rant some on this page are hinting towards.

 

I see no anti-capitalist rant. Hinting??? This is business.

 

Art Browns closed because Manhattan real estate gets more expensive every year. They are in the most expensive part of Manhattan. The side-streets, the cross-streets, used to be less desirable. As Jane Jacobs suggested in "Death and Life of Great American Cities", about 50 years ago, a city needs a section with cheap rent to allow interesting things to grow. Or more than one section. Musicians tend to live far uptown or in Brooklyn, for instance. Rents have increased in the midtown side-streets, closing many of the one-off, off-beat shops. The best general-purpose midtown bookstore, Coliseum Books, closed around 2004 or 2005. The space became a sandwich chain...Au Bon Pain, or something similar. The writers bookstore (sign: "Wise men fish here") closed in the mid-90's. They were in a "brownstone", and the owner of the store lived in the brownstone. Owner died, and, as best I remember, inheritors could not resist the money offered for the building.

 

Mont Blanc boutiques probably survive because they sell nothing but small luxury items. Art Browns sold expensive pens and they sold Safaris and the inexpensive line that Sheaffer's US distributor seems to favor. Everything in between. They sold paper: compare the sale-price of a Rhodia pad to that of a Mont Blanc 146 or a high-end watch.

 

Another reason, I think: up through about 2000 people still bought good pens, whether ballpoint or fountain pens. Pens good enouugh to be used for years, through several refills. Now, I see more and more people writing with throw-away pens such as the Papermate profile. Many don't write: they thumb words into handheld phones or ultra-slim portable computers.

[wallylynn]

 

Pens good enouugh to be used for years, through several refills.

I suppose that's part of the problem. How does one make a living making things that last a lifetime or two?

[Florida Blue]

What I find odd is that this place couldn't make it, yet every big mall in America has a Mont Blanc store. Perhaps MB is just losing money to keep their shops open for advertising purposes, but surely they can't be doing more business than Art Brown. I suppose combined they are, but any one MB store probably isn't selling more monetary volume in one day than AB did in one day. I guess that's just proof that the big corporations will outlast the mom and pops.

 

Montblanc boutiques are not really fountain pen shops (at least they aren't anymore).

 

MB has become a luxury/lifestyle brand that sells watches, leather goods, perfume and fine writing instruments. I was thinking about MB when I heard Art Brown folded and I thought that if they had not diversified their products there was a good chance they they could have gone out of business years ago. However, MB is owned by the luxury conglomerate Richemont (who also own Cartier and Alfred Dunhill) so there is probably less of a chance they could go under.

 

I also wondered how a chain like Paradise Pens stays in business especially since they rely heavily on sales of MB and most malls with a Paradise Pen also have a MB boutique.

[Jerome Tarshis]

First, rents in malls are lower than rents in the most expensive neighborhoods of the most expensive cities. Nevertheless, there are malls that have gone broke and malls that have higher vacancy rates than the owners feel comfortable with.

 

Second, Montblanc has closed a fair number of boutiques in recent years. They've shrunk their retail presence in the Occident, in favor of opening ever more boutiques in China. So, no, MB isn't a machine for successfully making money no matter what. Even they need to trim their sails to whichever way the wind is blowing. Now that we're hearing some discouraging news about the Chinese economy, MB's expansion in China just might slow down.

 

Whether Marilyn Brown thinks she would derive either much pleasure or much profit from being her charming self on the Web, I have no idea. The Goulets are a whole lot younger than the Browns. Being born into a new and different world affects the way people think about their possibilities.

[pelahale]

We will all miss the Brown's store, probably the best pen retail store in Manhattan (with due respect to FPH also). Rest-in-Peace, ArtBrown, Manhattan. Long live FPH.

 

 

http://pleeho.smugmug.com/Travel/NYC2012/i-s5LnCWV/0/L/ArtBrownNYC-L.jpg

[OnePenGuy]

Even if the brick-and-mortar store is closed, this looks to be their online presence: NYC Pens And Pencils Stationery

 

Bummer that the physical store had to close.

[jameswatts]

Well rats. Had been planning to visit the shop during an upcoming trip to NYC. So sad to hear this.

[BillZ]

Patronize your indy pen shops! Whenever I'm in Houston I make it a point to stop by Dromgoole's in Rice Village and visit with the wonderful owners and staff. I always try to buy Something even if it's just a bottle of ink. Can't imagine them not being there.

[PAKMAN]

All right guys, lets talk pens not politics!

 

Moderator

[smiorgan]

Sad news indeed -- I got to visit the shop on my last US visit, got great service, loved the selection. Also, the salesperson handed me the pen from his pocket to sign my credit card slip (a Fat Boy bp, and I regret not buying one on impulse), rather than direct me to one of the pens on the counter. Seemed like a nice gesture from an enthusiast, rather than a salesperson. I don't think I'd get that from a Montblanc store (nice as the staff are).

[Miles R.]

I was just looking for something on line, went to Artbrown.com, found (to my shock and dismay) the domain to be for sale, came to this site to see if I could learn what had happened, and found this thread. How disheartening! I never made a large purchase there (I have bought only a few costly pens over a period of 30 years), but I would stop in on occasion during my visits to NYC to look longingly at the pens and to buy supplies.

Edited August 6, 2013 by Miles R.

[warblerick]

Even if the brick-and-mortar store is closed, this looks to be their online presence: NYC Pens And Pencils Stationery

 

Bummer that the physical store had to close.

This seems to be a generic web-site for the B & M store. There is no way to order anything on-line, just contact info and directions to the (no longer in existence) store.

[Runnin_Ute]

Any time a locally owned retailer - regardless of what they sell closes its doors it isn't necessarily a good thing. (but is it bad? - different question for a different day and a different thread) A city loses part of its character when it loses these kinds of places.

 

Never had the opportunity to visit NYC let alone Art Brown's.