Pearl River Mart closing its flagship store in early 2021

Pearl River Mart, NYC’s one-stop shop for tea, lucky cat figurines, lamps, ramen, clothing, hot sauce and more, is closing its current Tribeca flagship location in early 2021. “With the future of our economy uncertain and little relief on the horizon for commercial tenants, it has become clear that we, along with thousands of other small businesses in NYC, have no other choice but to shut down,” writes Pearl River Mart’s Joanne Kwong on their website. “The pandemic has changed everything.”

Pearl River Mart opened in 1971 and has been in its Tribeca location (395 Broadway) since 2016, which they moved to after a massive rent increase at their SoHo location forced them to move. “For 49 years, Pearl River has figured into many a New Yorker’s origin story, furnishing countless apartments, restaurants, wedding venues, and movie sets; inspiring myriad waves of designers, artists, and tastemakers; and serving as an anchor in the community through every type of disaster afflicting downtown Manhattan — hurricanes, epidemics, blackouts, recessions, and terrorist attacks, to name a few. The addresses sometimes changed when the leases expired [five times in fact] but the Chens rebuilt every single time, never losing faith that New York needed a place like Pearl River to make the city feel a little more like home.”

The owners are hoping to find a new location for their flagship store, but in the meantime they’ve also got a smaller shop and Pearl River Mart Foods, both of which are in Chelsea Market.

You can read PRM’s full statement on their website.