While they expect to survive the recession, all three have been hurt. Mr. Rosenberg says business is down 20 percent; Mr. Okuyan, 15 percent; Mr. Shimron, nearly 50 percent. Still, they count themselves lucky. Every day, Mr. Rosenberg walks down Amsterdam Avenue from his apartment on West 90th to his shop near West 79th and tabulates the recession’s impact. “Twelve empty storefronts,” he said. Mr. Okuyan just has to look out his window onto Broadway: “We lost a flower shop, vitamin store, bookstore, Malaysian restaurant, women’s clothing store.”
GRANNY-MADE (381 AMSTERDAM, BETWEEN 78TH AND 79TH) Mr. Rosenberg opened the store, which features handmade sweaters, 25 years ago. It was mainly a women’s shop with a men’s section and a few children’s things. While his clothing is priced mid-range (women’s machine-knit sweaters start at $60), well into the previous decade he was able to sell British hand-knit women’s sweaters for $800. “That’s gone,” he said. “We did a lot of women’s suits, sportswear, reversible skirts — totally dropped after the recession.” He used to phone his female regular customers after Labor Day, inviting them to come see the new fall clothes, but stopped in September 2008, when Lehman Brothers collapsed. “I didn’t know who was hurt and who wasn’t,” he said. “I felt it’d be unseemly to call.”
As sales dropped — and a women’s shop closed a few doors down — he noticed children’s sales were not falling as much. “I always listen to my customers, and what I’d hear from mothers and grandmothers was, ‘How can you not spend on a baby?’ ” Mr. Rosenberg said. “We started carrying swaddling blankets, first toys, birth clothes, we even do clothes for prenatals now. We just expanded into christening gowns, people were asking and they’ll spend — from $106 to $192.”
“Girls’ dresses have been explosive — 6 months to 8 years. We stay out of the teenaged years — they get difficult.”
Lee Anne MacDonald, 64, a writer and publicist, shops less for herself these days, but still buys for her grandchildren at Granny-Made. “You have to remember a little girl on her birthday, you have to remember the little boy who’s truck crazy,” she said. “It’s the idea of hope. They’re our future.”
Long-term customers ask, “When did you become a baby store?” In just 650 square feet of space, from a business that typically does $40,000 in sales a month, Mr. Rosenberg spotted a national trend.
While children’s clothing sales are down 7.5 percent nationally over the last two years, adult clothing is down 8.9 percent, according to a survey by NPD, a market research company. The Bureau of Labor Statistics reports employment at men’s stores is down 25 percent since the recession began; employment at women’s stores is down 1.5 percent, but at children’s stores it is up slightly. “People want their kids to be insulated from the recession,” said Ellen Davis, a National Retail Federation spokeswoman. “We notice it in holiday spending — back-to-school didn’t decline as much as other holidays.”
It’s still been hard for Mr. Rosenberg. He went into his retirement account to pay vendors and meet his payroll. Children’s items are lower-priced, producing a smaller profit. “Our average adult sweater is $150,” he said. “You have to sell a lot of $30 rompers to make up.” But last month, he did $52,000 in sales, his strongest March in several years.
