Luxury furniture retailer Coco Republic has learned that it’s extremely difficult to operate in the liberal hellhole of San Francisco and has decided to close its flagship store, just seven months after opening.
The company blamed the decision on a lack of foot traffic and unsafe conditions due to crime.
T-Mobile recently announced that it was calling it quits in downtown San Francisco for the very same reasons.
Last week, Nordstrom announced it was closing its store at the Westfield Mall on Market Street, along with a nearby Nordstrom Rack, citing high crime and lack of law enforcement.
Last month, Whole Foods closed its Market Street store a little over one year after opening, due to high crime and public drug use near the store.
SF Gate broke the news:
After 7 months, Coco Republic’s San Francisco flagship announces closure
In October 2022, after completing a multimillion-dollar renovation, Australian furniture and lifestyle retailer Coco Republic opened its flagship San Francisco location at 55 Stockton St. in Union Square.
Seven months later, a Coco Republic spokesperson told SFGATE that its flagship San Francisco location is set to close in the next few months, citing a familiar reason: lack of customer foot traffic, which the company pinned in part on unsafe conditions — or at least people’s perception of unsafe conditions — in the surrounding area.
“[It] has become clear that downtown San Francisco is no longer a viable option for Coco Republic’s flagship store,” the spokesperson wrote in an email, adding, “It was a difficult decision and one that was not taken lightly. The recent closings of Whole Foods, Nordstrom, Saks Off 5th and Anthropologie show that ours is not an isolated problem in Union Square, and we hope the city will be able to address the issues that are making it so challenging to do business there.”
According to The San Francisco Standard, the Union Square shopping area has lost 17 retailers since 2020.
