After 21 Years, Park Slope Toy Shop Leaves 5th Ave

PARK SLOPE, BROOKLYN — After over 20 years of business, a neighborhood combination toy shop and kid's hair salon is leaving Fifth Avenue and heading for the wild world of the web.

"Everyone shops online and the pandemic pushed it even more," owner Brigitte Prat said.

Now it's time for Prat to "cut" Lulu's Cuts and Toys' storefront and move to a full e-commerce shop.

"It’s like starting a new business," she said.

When the pandemic hit, Prat said she had no idea what the future would hold for her shop.

Luckily her eagle-eyed Gen-Z daughter told her about an e-commerce platform that conveniently was having a promotional pandemic period for affected business.

Little did Prat know that her temporary pandemic stopgap would eventually become her new business model.

Right away, local shoppers were making online orders and Prat found herself making deliveries seven days a week as well as facilitating curbside pickup.

While the e-commerce world has been dominated for years by leviathan Amazon, Prat said she decided not to complain, but to compete at a local scale.

She started marketing the shop on Instagram and setting up birthday and holiday gift registries, catering to the convenience and ease valued by today's parents, Prat said, something that many shoppers utilize Amazon for.

Prat soon found that shoppers were heading to her store from all around the world for products that were out of stock elsewhere, a discovery made when she searched for an item and saw that Amazon couldn't keep it stocked.

But Prat also found the tight labor market was hitting her shop, too, leaving her to work even more shifts as she basically ran two stores at the same time by herself.

Because of difficulties in getting help in the store, along with the booming e-commerce, Prat thought maybe it was time to finally close up the shop and focus exclusively on the online business.

“I’m relieved in many ways but incredibly sad to not have the store in the neighborhood anymore," she said.

"For 22 years I was a single parent running a business alone. Owning a small business is demanding, difficult, you sacrifice a lot. I’ve missed weddings, birthdays, doctor’s appointments, dance recitals — a lot," Prat said.

"Now it’s time for me to take care of myself and put myself first.”