A July 22 Reuters article, covering the struggle retailers across the country are facing in restocking their shelves for the back-to-school season, was opened with a mention of the Upper West Side’s Stationery and Toy World, located at 125 West 72nd Street between Columbus and Amsterdam Avenues.
Manager Gary Rowe told the publication that his vendors, who are typically reliable, are facing inventory shortages on items including pens, paper and folders – and that prices on items they do have are unusually high.
“I’m hoping that when everything catches up, we get more stock. Business has been really slow,” Rowe told Reuters.
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The article cites a number of factors causing these challenges for stores nationwide: “higher production costs, cargo delays from China and other Asian countries, and sky-high shipping rates.”
Quite a few items appear to be out of stock on Stationery and Toy World’s website; for products which are available, the number of units still remaining are listed.
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Before the pandemic – but well into the Upper West Side’s long-running retail crisis – Stationery and Toy World teamed up with another small business on the Upper West Side – West Side Kids at 498 Amsterdam Avenue (at 84th Street) – to refer customers to one another. The strategy was for the store’s owners to contact one another if a customer couldn’t find what they were looking for.
At the time, Stationery and Toy World’s owner, Donna Schofeld, said “We work together to stay alive, because it’s becoming very challenging with the internet.”
In November 2020, West Side Kids was also featured in a national story – this time by NBC News – about the challenge of keeping a small business alive through the pandemic.
As both of these small businesses have survived through many ups and downs, let’s hope they continue to innovate and prosper, and let’s help them by giving them our business.
Stationery and Toy World can be visited at 125 West 72nd Street or online at stationeryandtoy.com.
West Side Kids can be visited at 498 Amsterdam Avenue or online at westsidekidsnyc.com.
These are both wonderful neighborhood resources and great examples of why it is so important to shop small and support our local shops!
As I see it, Stationery and Toy World is a major part of what makes New York New York and the UWS the UWS. May it endure until we sink beneath the waves, or ideally thereafter.
I love everything about Stationary and Toy on 72nd. Please help keep it alive by shopping there. It’s the last of what used to be a block of practical mom and pop shops on 72nd. It will be a huge loss to the neighborhood if it weren’t able to survive. It’s up to us.
Lori, tell it to the younger demographic living on the UWS who order absolutely everything on the internet. It is maddening to see the daily stack of boxes from Amazon and other companies, selling items you can easily procure from local stores.
I don’t see this behavior changing sadly. Personally I do not understand living in a city like NYC and not wanting to shop it’s amazing local retail shops with all of their eccentricity and individuality. Sometimes I wonder of these are the traits that they fear. It would explain patronizing Starbucks, Chipotle and other banal corporate restaurants when the real thing is so readily available.