Fifteen Years of Magic Beans in Brookline | Magic Beans Brookline is Closing on Jan. 26th

This post is a hard one to write. It’s almost exactly 16 years since Sheri and I first imagined Magic Beans as a warm, nurturing and supportive place for Brookline families. Over the years, we’ve grown and thrived. We’ve opened new stores and closed some, too. We’ve guided thousands of new parents as they navigate those stressful first purchases for their babies. We’ve watched your kids grow up. Ours have grown up too. 

The world has changed a lot since 2004. We live differently, parent differently and shop differently than we did back then. Our mission has not changed: we are still here to make life easier for parents. But as we look toward a sustainable future for Magic Beans, we know that we need a bold vision to bring this company into better alignment with the changing habits of our customers. Good things are coming, but not without some painful decisions. 

It is with a heavy heart — but also a great deal of hope for our future — that I share this news: We will be closing our Brookline store at the end of January. The Brookline store is where it all began. It’s the OG, as our kids say. But our business in Brookline has struggled in recent years while expenses have soared. When the lease came up for renewal, we couldn’t responsibly commit to another long term. Our landlord, who has always been good to us, agreed to let us stay while they found a new tenant. The space has now been leased, and it’s time for us to say good-bye to 312 Harvard Street. We will close this location on January 26th. 

As always, when we close a store, we work hard to keep as many of our wonderful people as we possibly can and reassign them to different locations. Our people drive our business and we are so grateful to all those who have given their time, energy and passion to this location over the last 15 years. We are so proud to be a Brookline-born business, and we will always be part of the fabric of this community, even if we no longer have a storefront here. 

We have some big ideas we are looking to implement down the road, and having fewer locations makes it significantly easier for us to prototype and test new concepts. We will be a more agile company, better positioned to bring Magic Beans into a long and successful future. We are also making some exciting investments in the business this year. We have been working on a brand new website, which will launch in February, along with a streamlined and fully integrated checkout system both in stores and online. We will work, as always, to keep improving our customer experience, because helping families is what we love most. 

I know that this news may be hard to digest. This store is a very special place for us, and we will forever treasure the memories we’ve made there. We are feeling a lot of big feelings here as a family and as a company, but we know this is the right decision. More than anything, we are so grateful to our Brookline customers for their support and for allowing us to be part of their lives. If you live in the area, please stop by and say good-bye. Either way we’d love to hear your stories and memories, so feel free to share them with us here, on Facebook or via email. Endings are hard, but they always open doors to new beginnings. Stay tuned.

Eli