This June will mark one year of having our flagship doors at 328 Bleecker Street open for biz, which is wild because it feels like 37 lightyears ago. In that time, we've designed and built several pop-ups around the globe and opened our LA Flagship with Renegade, learning a ton in the process. Phrased another way, we had no idea what we were doing when we built Bleecker...
At Bandit, evolving isn't just our mission, it's our DNA. We're working every day to push not only the sport forward, but ourselves. From our product, to our creative, to the website, to the experience within our 4 walls, we are consistently evaluating how we can do things better and differently. With this in mind and a 6-year lease in hand, we decided to waste no time in applying all of our learnings to our NYC Flagship store experience. We tapped local legend, Studio Liguanea, to help us reimagine the store from scratch.
Here's what to expect the next time you come in...
1. Rhythm Zero and Bandit are now slightly separated. A beautiful half wall with fluted glass and an open archway now divides the Rhythm Zero café and Bandit. This division provides café customers with a dedicated place to enjoy their coffee while athletes and customers can more freely bounce around the Bandit "side."
2. There is now a dedicated runner hangout area. With updated stainless steel seating (perfect for sweaty bodies) in the corner window and along the half-wall in front of the JBL's, runners can now come in from long summer runs and cool off with a cold Cadence without feeling like their disrupting shoppers or café customers.
4. The dressing room is now off the floor and in a private walled room with a lock. When we first moved in, we were forced to put the dressing room in a curtained rectangle in the corner of the main retail floor. It was not ideal for... anyone. With this updated layout, the dressing room is now behind a "secret" door in the back of the store.
5. New racking, shelves, and product displays around the store. The moving of the dressing room really opened the space up for more product to exist on the floor. This now allowed us to create a more seamless browsing experience where you can easily discover our Steady State™, seasonal collections, and accessories. We've replaced what was essentially dining room tables with true retail display tables.
6. More storage on the floor will cut down wait times. Previously, we had no storage on the floor and any time a customer asked for another size, we had to literally run down a flight of stairs into the basement to go grab it. Now there are 12 deep cabinets right on the floor where we'll keep extra sizes of items.
6. Raised ceiling beams, new floors, and custom lighting fixtures breathe new life into the space. There were several unnecessary (read: not weight baring) beams that came down from the ceiling, making the space feel a bit cavernous. With those gone, new blue (yes, blue) floors, and custom Prado lighting fixtures, the space feels spacious, not too bright, and overall comfortable.
7. The vintage JBL's have an updated home. Our JBL 4315 Studio Monitors now fit flush into the console and is surrounded by a curated array of our favorite running books, albums, magazines, and objects.
8. The new checkout area is now what it was always meant to be. A new marble counter top with a glass display case, which aligns back to the one we have in our LA shop, is more properly scaled (the previous was far too big) and sits in front of a Frame TV that displays a rotating curation of our seasonal collection creative work.
All this and more awaits you at 328 Bleecker the next time you come in (minus the lighting part... that will be done by next week).
