Angelo Baque says he never envisioned opening a store for his 12-year-old, New York-based streetwear label Awake because of how challenging it is to run a brick-and-mortar business in Manhattan.

But in June last year, Awake opened the doors to its first physical shop, on the hot retail strip of Orchard Street on New York’s Lower East Side. Baque said that, aside from once being personally told by the late Virgil Abloh to open a store, he was able to finance it with an investment from Lightwork and was attracted to the negotiable commercial rents in New York post-Covid. He also wanted a physical store to address how his brand and its customers were changing.

“The stuff that we were making at the time, cut-and-sew pieces, were more difficult to sell on a website. At that point, we became a more touchpoint brand, and I started noticing that Kith and Dover Street Market were selling our cut-and-sew pieces [in-store] better than us,” said Baque. “It was also becoming really difficult to show who we were on an Instagram account.”

Awake is part of a wave of menswear brands opening stores across downtown Manhattan at a moment when young consumers are eager for in-person shopping, social-media marketing feels stale and less effective and menswear and streetwear brands are trying to appeal to a changing customer looking for something new. Streetwear brands such as le Père and Fugazi also opened storefronts on Orchard Street within the past year. Stüssy is opening a new flagship on Prince Street and Stòffa opened its first flagship on Grand Street in May. Steven Alan, which closed all its U.S. retail stores in 2019, made a return to Manhattan retail with the opening of a Chelsea store in September. Other young labels, including Denim Tears and Vowels, have opened physical locations this year as well.

Between 2020 and 2023, New York City became a hotbed for first-time retailers, primarily apparel brands, which inked 74 deals during the period, according to the commercial real-estate services and investment company CBRE. While CBRE reports leasing in Manhattan has slowed this past quarter, with fewer vacancies available and post-pandemic rents rising, new-to-market brands are still signing the most deals. And for new menswear retail specifically, downtown New York remains foundational.

“There’s this history of menswear and apparel located in downtown destination environments where the male customer will come and shop,” said CBRE’s senior vice president Joe Hudson. “There’s a number of retailers that have [opened stores] recently that are new names to the neighbourhoods.”

It takes more than finding a space to be successful, however. Baque, a fixture of New York’s menswear ecosystem since his days working retail at Canal Jean Company and Nom de Guerre before serving as Supreme’s brand director for several years, said the time of just opening a store, releasing products and expecting people to show up are long gone.

“If you’re still operating like that, you’re not going to last long,” he said. “You have to constantly activate, communicate and offer a different experience for customers that want to come back.”

Why Menswear Brands Are Embracing New York Retail

Even streetwear brands born online, such as Fugazi, are opening stores to fuel growth beyond social marketing. Although Fugazi’s founder, Trevor Gorji, credits the past seven years of his “internet” brand’s rise to social platforms like Instagram and YouTube, he opened Fugazi’s Lower Manhattan flagship in April to “legitimise” his label. There’s a stigma against “Instagram brands,” he said, and he wanted to show his brand was “serious and real.”

For Vowels creative director Yuki Yagi, the new store, which opened near Manhattan’s Chinatown in May, was a way to infuse his “alternative-luxury” streetwear label — whose graphic t-shirts alone cost $135 — with a sense of prestige. The store doubles as an appointment-only research library filled with 2,000 archival books and magazines curated by Yagi. He compared it to the experience of being offered champagne at Hermès.

To justify the high commercial rents, however, brands often need to figure out how to distinguish themselves in a competitive market where another option for a shopper’s dollars is a short walk away.

Fugazi is attempting to open the next buzzy streetwear cafe with “Le Gaz,” following in the footsteps of retailers like Ralph Lauren, Dover Street Market and Aimé Leon Dore that have used cafés to turn their spaces into destinations for more than shopping. Awake’s store, meanwhile, doubles as an community space with free events.

When managed successfully, these stores can be lucrative. Hudson at CBRE pointed out that the financial returns from a physical store can be more favourable these days than relying entirely on expensive digital marketing and e-commerce, which is seeing an industry-wide slowdown. A strong retail presence can also create a feedback loop that drives shoppers back to a brand’s e-commerce business.

Awake’s physical space, for example, seems to be working for the brand. Baque said that while the global reach of wholesale accounts remain important for Awake’s business, its DTC sales in-store and through e-commerce are now its strongest revenue streams.

“Do you spend $250,000 on Instagram for a whole year of social [marketing] or do you want to put that towards a brick-and-mortar [store] and get some kind of return on investment,” said Yagi. “I think people just want to see something live and more real.”

The Challenges of Running a Store

Managing physical retail does come with adjustments, however, especially when it comes to keeping a space stocked with inventory. Opening Awake’s first store felt like a reset for the brand that took him back to “year one,” according to Baque. He hasn’t only invested heavily in store events to introduce a new generation of customers to Awake, but even re-evaluated the clothing his brand releases.

“I [previously] just designed what I like and didn’t really consider how it would merchandise on the floor,” he said. “Now, that has played a big part into how I design — how it lays out in the shop and how I want it to flow.”

Gorji has found designing and presenting new products in-store consistently more challenging than just dropping products online whenever they’re ready. The brand’s in-store cafe was also opened by three of his friends who are splitting the rent with Gorji.

Yagi has his own unique dynamics to deal with. He described Vowels as a start-up that’s accountable to investors. Last month, the brand tweaked its appointment-only approach by opening a section of the store to the public.

For Gorji, even with the challenges of running a physical space, the opportunity to open a New York store was one he couldn’t pass on.

“I couldn’t wait another year,” Gorji said. “Now was the time to secure something like this; otherwise we’ll regret it.”

Baque, a native New Yorker, is pleased with New York’s menswear retail boom, likening it to a surge in retail shops that took place in Los Angeles about a decade ago. The same is now happening in New York, in his view.

“I’m happy when I see other stores open up because it just adds more to the landscape,” he said.