Let’s face it — 2022 felt like a pretty rough time (ruff time?) for neighborhood dogs. From multiple disease outbreaks to underwhelming dog parks, our beloved furry friends really got put through the wringer. So we’re certainly celebrating the opening of a new pet store, in case you want to treat your dog for being such a trooper.
LoveThyBeast, originally based in the East Village, has soft-launched its North Brooklyn store at 115 North 5th Street. News of its opening initially came to us through a tweet from East Village local news site EV Grieve, who noted a letter taped to LoveThyBeast’s front door.
“East Village, we are moving. We have searched and searched for over 16 months for a bigger location but the truth is landlords do not care to keep NYC colorful and full of artists and small businesses,” the letter reads. “If we did secure a lease brands like Blank Street Coffee would overbid and steal our lease. This happened at more than 1 location.”
(If you’re not yet familiar with how the venture capitalist-backed Blank Street Coffee has destabilized countless small business communities around the city, AirMail did a great piece about it last year)
We spoke to store founder Tiziana Agnello to get the lowdown on the new location.
Tell us a little bit about your new storefront and the decision to open in Williamsburg. What was the process like for finding this particular spot in Williamsburg?
As a long time local, one of my favorite rituals is leashing up the dogs, grabbing a coffee, and enjoying all the small businesses in Williamsburg on our walks. Being in the local dog community, it wasn’t hard to see the neighborhood would benefit from a store like LoveThyBeast. Funny enough, our customers have always asked when we were going to open in Brooklyn. Naturally, I thought of my neighborhood first. Our new storefront will look similar to our location in Hudson, NY. The space is about 4x larger than our space was in the East Village, and this floorplan allows us to offer a lot more product range to our customers. This location will have all our core products plus more items focused on the home. It will also feature a new creative projects category with our embroidery station as a first offering. You can have anything you want from your dog’s name, to your dog’s likeness embroidered on jackets, carriers, tie-dye hoodies, bandanas, collars, as well has matching items for their humans. With the more square feet we will be able to are host community events and creative workshops.
Finding this location in Williamsburg was a challenge, just like anywhere in NYC. At the time I was looking, store fronts were getting scooped up the day they listed. The beautiful part about our new location is it’s operated by a local family, who work with their own private realtor. There wasn’t multiple realtors trying to show or bid on the same space. For me, the most difficult part in securing this location was trusting the process and the landlord. We waited 10 months before they presented us with the actual lease because we had to wait for the tenant at the time to vacate.
The letter you published in front of your old store sort of made the rounds on social media, where it got a lot of positive reactions. What do you make about the response?
What I said in the poster was my honest experience, and it was a hard decision to leave the East Village. I did all I could to find a new location nearby and stay in the neighborhood, Williamsburg was supposed to be a third location, not a re-location. I extended our lease in the East Village a number of times in hopes we could secure a new location, but I could not continue to extend indefinitely. After nearly a year and a half of searching, I decided to focus on the Williamsburg location, and re-fluff our Hudson, NY store. We will be back in Manhattan when the time is right.
Anything else you’d like to share with our readers?
Our N5th location is open running on soft hours currently, Wed-Sun 11am to 6pm. Our grand opening will be February 11th, we will have grab bags for the first 100 people, custom dog portraits, and free embroidery all day long. Follow us on Instagram to hear about all the exciting new things in-store and details about our community events.