BLEECKER STREET BEAT

Zuri

By Ede Rothaus

Seven years ago, walking west along Bleecker Street headed to the Abingdon Square Greenmarket, I passed a small store with two colorful dresses pinned by wooden clothespins to a line hanging in the window. It was Zuri, an African centered clothing and crafts shop.

Filled with dresses, all in its one signature style, the store has become a neighborhood fixture. It’s a comfortable and welcoming place where one can pop in and have a chat with no pressure to buy anything.

During this reporter’s last visit on a chilly and grey early Spring afternoon, over a three hour period, a dozen or so people were trying on clothing or waiting to do so, shopping for crafts and gifts, speaking with the longtime staff or just hanging out – simultaneously noisy and very low key.

In 2016 co-founder Sandra Zhao was living in Nairobi, Kenya. She designed a simple tunic or A-style dress for herself to wear to a wedding. A local tailor was able to create the dress using ready-made Kitenge printed cloth sold at a local market.

At the event she met Ashleigh Miller, another transplanted New Yorker, who admired the dress and asked to have one made for herself. Zhao promised she would do it and kept her word. The two quickly became friends and with Miller’s background in textiles, decided to become partners and try selling the dress as a business. It succeeded.

Zhao, followed by Miller and her family, returned to the States. To establish their brand in the U.S., the two first tried pop-ups in the East Village and California. The logistics involved running them soon made it clear that a brick and mortar presence was needed.

September 2017 found them searching for a store. Comfortable in the Village and wanting to be in a neighborhood where the community could drop in to their shop the pair walked along Bleecker Street and called every phone number listed on a ‘for rent’ sign.

The owners of 363 Bleecker Street answered one of their phone calls. As longtime West Village residents and having had their own laundry a few blocks away on Bleecker, the couple were no longer interested in living above a corporate tenant.

They wanted to help maintain the spirit of the neighborhood they loved and were intrigued by having a small artisan start up on the ground floor of their building. The couple offered a generous lease with an affordable rent. The relationship between the current owners – now the original owners’ grandchildren – and Zuri has become personal and meaningful over the last years. During the Covid pandemic these landlords chose to make it doable for Zuri to stay open.

It takes a work force of 130 to produce Zuri’s products. They partner with a Kenyan ethical manufacturer that prioritizes values that are important to Zuri: using best practices, treating employees fairly, paying a guaranteed salary rather than the more common piecework and providing a healthy and safe environment. Ideally, high on the priority list is to make products that people love and create an environment where people love to work and feel valued.

Employees are also offered benefits such as daily free hot lunches, tea breaks and free childcare.

Since its inception, Zuri sources its textiles from several countries in different places buying ready made pieces in markets in Tanzania and Kenya; batiks and stitch resist batiks from Ghana and Senegal; and Kitenge cloth from Ghana, Kenya, Senegal and Tanzania as well as producing its own designs.

Zuri now has a robust online presence with a sister store on Fillmore Street in the Pacific Heights neighborhood in San Francisco and it has increased its crafts and product line substantially. From a Kisw Swahili root word, Zuri meaning beautiful or good.The store lives up to its name.