Staff Blog
Fairmount Avenue’s Ali’s Wagon to close in February
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| aliswagon.com |
Ali's Wagon, a jewel of a neighborhood business, will be closing its doors in mid-February. Well-known in both style guru and parent circles, Ali's (2017 Fairmount Ave.) is part home and children’s boutique (selling everything from bacon-studded artisan chocolate bars to Philly’s own Duross and Langel soaps) and part parenting center (offering childbirth classes, infant massage workshops and a weekly new mom's group in which first-timers share resources and commiserate about spit up). Attendance at the parenting center is often so high that moms have to bring their babies in carriers because the tiny store can't fit all the strollers.
Maybe it shouldn't come as a surprise that owners Jessie Menken and Nat Weston, who opened the Fairmount boutique two years ago, have decided to call it quits. It's never easy to run a successful independent business, and it's harder when stocks tumble and city budgets shrink all around you. But the closing of Ali's is unfortunate, largely because it had shown all signs of beating the odds. It had a banner holiday season in 2007. And Philly Mag has already named the store in its Best of Philly issue twice — in 2007 for best new boutique and in 2008 for best "Mom Hang."
But, as Jessie and Nat have shared in an emotional letter to customers, the past three months have taken a significant toll on the business. The letter, which is displayed in the store's front window and posted on its Web site, explains that closing their store is just about the last thing that either wanted to do. In their words: "In our better moments we have laughed that were it just the two of us we would sell the house and eat ramen noodles in the car to keep this store which we so love." But, with one child and a second due next month, gambling with the current economy just didn't make sense for them.
Owning Ali's Wagon has clearly been a labor of love for its owners, who equate closing their business with "a death in our family." If attendance at the new mom's group is any indication, they won't be grieving alone.
[...] by Kirstin Lindermayer categories Shopping, The CLOG, the budget crisis A couple of weeks ago, we reported that Ali’s Wagon, Fairmount’s home/children’s boutique and parenting center, [...]