Why cult London store Goodhood is on the move

Sign up to receive the Vogue Business newsletter for the latest luxury news and insights, plus exclusive membership discounts. If you’re a streetwear fan who lives in or visits London, it’s likely you’ve wiled away an afternoon at Goodhood. The store on Curtain Road in Shoreditch was a haven for off-the-beaten-track brands such as Beams Plus, Cav Empt, Neighborhood, Wood Wood, Our Legacy, Stüssy and Brain Dead. But — as it did for many retailers — the pandemic changed things. Footfall to Curtain Road never fully recovered, and Goodhood founders Jo Sindle and Kyle Stewart eventually decided to find a new home for the iconic store. They closed the doors to 151 Curtain Road on 19 May and, using recent investment from an undisclosed US backer, are planning to reopen on nearby Hanbury Street, between bustling Brick Lane and Spitalfields market, on 6 June. “So many of the cool bars and clubs in the area have closed. We wanted to be somewhere more vibey again,” says Sindle, speaking on a park bench just around the corner from the new store site, which doesn’t yet have chairs. “We used to have a lot of trade with tourists and just passers by, and it’s really diminished.” The new store will be bigger than Curtain Road, to make space for events and experiences. It’s a turbulent time to upsize, amid the collapse of Matches and the well-documented struggles of Farfetch and Yoox Net-a-Porter. However, while the major players grapple to stay afloat, and critics bemoan the lack of originality from larger fashion retailers, smaller independents like Goodhood, fellow London retailer LN-CC and Italy’s Modes are taking a bet on community-focused, experiential bricks-and-mortar retail to stand out. Regaining ground after Covid Self-confessed streetwear obsessives Sindle and Stewart launched Goodhood in 2007, originally in a small store on Coronet Street in London’s Hoxton neighbourhood before moving down the block to the 3,000-square-foot unit on Curtain Road in 2014. After that, sales took off — online as well as off. Sindle and Stewart took on a team to help them scale, while they courted investors, eyed new locations in the UK and the US, and planned to invest in their online business. Then, Covid hit. “We had to shut all that down overnight,” says Sindle. “And from that point we’ve been getting ourselves back to that place. If we were like some of our competitors — who were backed a couple of years before that all happened — we’d be in a different position.” Goodhood has since regained some ground. The retailer secured a US-based investor this year (the founders declined to share the name) and it has slowly paid off debts accrued while the store was closed during lockdown. The retailer will also use the new store to launch brand-incubator Goo that seeks to formalise the brand activations and mentorships Stewart and Sindle have long provided to their brand partners. There are still headwinds: Goodhood faces ongoing competition from bigger retailers like End and Mr Porter. “We used to be in a position where we had a lot more differentiation in terms of what we sold, but we quickly realised that the industry was very much looking to us as a barometer,” says Sindle. “We’d start to sell a brand and test it out. Our competitors would see how it was going. And if we bought it again, then they’d jump on it and buy it as well.” The new Goodhood will stock local East London brands like Broadway Market bookshop Artwords and vintage dealer Unified Goods, while the music will be curated by Hackney record store Stranger Than Paradise. In 2022, Goodhood launched its own fashion line, Goods by Goodhood, designed by the founders in collaboration with Brain Dead co-founder Ed Davis; this will feature more heavily in the Hanbury Street store, helping to set it apart from other destinations. The retailer is also looking to stay competitive on price. “We’re up against companies that are pumped full of investment, with huge growth strategies that then have overbought stock,” says Sindle. “That’s been going on now for about a year and a half. And that creates an issue for us because we don’t have more stock than we need. So we don’t have to slash prices, but in order to be competitive, we have to match their prices.” British streetwear star Aries is one of the many brands Goodhood has supported since the early days. “Kyle and Jo have created a community in Goodhood — one where the taste and interests of that community is reflected in a constantly evolving curation of brands for the like-minded,” says Aries CEO Nicki Bidder. “Their sustained support and celebration of independent brands has been key to setting them apart from the homogeneity of the big online retailers.” Commitment to bricks and mortar Goodhood launched online in 2008, and e-commerce now represents 50 per cent of revenue. “We’ve found the online store has global reach, because we have pockets of like-minded customers around the world,” says Sindle, notably in US coastal cities. However, the physical store is still a cornerstone of its strategy. “We’re distraught about the fact that independents are disappearing,” says Sindle. “High streets are changing and everywhere looks the same. Even as online boomed, our store has always been the most important thing." In 2023, Goodhood hosted an exhibition of Beams Plus and artist Hirotton, inspired by punk and skate culture. Earlier this year, it held a listening party for Mount Kimbie’s latest album, in collaboration with Warp records. “We believe that stores are the highest cultural watermark,” says Stewart. “A store brings together music, art, fashion, even smell. That’s part of our mission, that people want to come down to the store and talk, experience, learn in a way that’s similar to going to a gig of your favourite band or an artist’s exhibition.” The store will be modular, meaning the configuration of the space can change, with a regularly rotating curation of brands across fashion, lifestyle and beauty, allowing customers to “explore lifestyle trends that correspond with our audience’s fluid interests, from cultural trends to hobbies like gardening”, the founders say. “It also has more space that we can open for events, or expand into as we grow,” says Sindle. “We already have a full calendar of events planned. Brands know we have a kind of captive audience that is very aligned with the way we think.” Looking ahead, US expansion is back on the cards thanks to its American investor. The ultimate goal is to reignite plans for stores in cities like New York and LA. Above all, the duo is hoping the space will mean Goodhood can continue to bring freshness to London’s dwindling retail scene. “We’re culture people, we’re product people, we come from that background. But over the past 10 years, the industry has been pushed by tech bros and venture capital people that want to completely take over fashion and culture,” Stewart says. “They don’t care about what happens to this retailer or who introduced it to the market. They just care about scaling this thing from £800 million up to £1.4 billion. But what effect does that have on the whole culture, you know, the culture of cities, communities and neighbourhoods?” “For me, success looks like continuing to stay open and trade without any money worries,” says Sindle. “I don’t know if you’re meant to say this, but we have no overlord ambitions of taking over the world. We want to continue to do something that’s meaningful for our customers and that has got some integrity to it. We want to continue to put out the things that we love to the people that we know that will love them. And we just want to see it survive.” Comments, questions or feedback? Email us at feedback@voguebusiness.com. More on this topic: Welcome to the future of shopping The dawn and demise of retail disruptors: How the last 20 years changed shopping ‘Multi-brand’s not dead’: London retailer LN-CC reopens after four years

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