I'm Kim Bhasin, luxury reporter at Bloomberg.
Here to invite you to the most exclusive
realms of luxury retail.
(upbeat music)
This is invitation Only.
(playful music)
Today I'm in the Upper East Side.
It's the poshest neighborhood in Manhattan.
Four out of five fancy dogs agree.
(dog panting)
Who loves wealthy neighborhoods?
You do!
Yes you do!
Here, you'll find some of the most opulent
homes in the world.
Look at these places!
(playful music)
Now, if you have a fancy home,
you need to fill it with cool and weird stuff.
And there's no better place for that than here,
at the Upper East Side's Creel & Gow.
(techno music)
(knocking)
Kim, welcome.
Jamie, what's up?
Hey, welcome to Creel & Gow.
What is this store, how would you describe it to
someone who knows nothing about it?
Especially in the beginning, I'd describe it to people
as a cabinet of curiosities.
A place where people can find gifts or things for
their home, which are one of a kind and we've sourced
around the world and brought back here tho New York.
We have taxidermy, that's usually the thing that people
are not used to seeing here in New York City.
We have minerals, primal art, we have craftsman
that are making things for us in Morocco
and in Egypt, and even here in the United States.
This is a, probably, 20 to 30 million
year old turtle shell.
Turtle shell fossil?
Fossil, mounted.
These are these coconuts which were carved in
the Caribbean in the 19th century by
French prisoners of war.
These are Chinese theater headdresses,
so they're from Chinese operas.
And they range in date from the early 20th century
to mid-20th century.
This is the famous Park Avenue pot plant.
It's metal, so you can't smoke it, but...
I guess you could, if you like shave it up.
It would be painful.
No, it would be kind of tough to do that.
Yeah, don't do that.
Don't do that at all.
(soft music)
Before I opened the store, I spent a huge portion
of my years traveling and finding things
and now I'm finding it here for the store.
Where does that interest come from?
I've had a passion for travel since I was a kid.
My family's from Long Island.
My grandmother and my great uncle were
the owners of Gardiner's Island, which is out
on the end of Long Island.
It's been in my family for, I don't know,
400 years, or something.
When I was 15, my parents sent me to Kenya for 3 months
and the last part of the trip we were in Nairobi
and I didn't realize that to them, blue jeans,
Levi's jeans were the gold standard.
It was amazing to them.
So I just went into the markets and traded my jeans
for baskets and things that were made by locals.
To me, that stuff was amazing and to them
they wanted my blue jeans, which I knew I could go back
to New York and get another pair.
And ever since then I've had this passion for travel.
I was doing this for myself up until right before
I opened this door and now I'm doing it for the stores.
So it's just kind of part of my life.
It's traveling and finding things.
(sirens)
And police cars.
Police cars.
And ambulances.
(laughter)
Don't arrest me!
(laughter)
(calm music)
So tell me about the business model here at Creel & Gow.
I'm not really following any traditional business model,
I have to say.
When I opened this, a lot of my friends who have
businesses on Madison Avenue and other places,
they're like "you're crazy, to be opening a
curiosity shop in New York."
But I thought well, I'm doing something completely
different than everybody else, and it's something
I really wanted to do.
We have plans to open, eventually, a store in Harris,
and then the idea was to maybe open out in San Francisco
at some point, too.
(upbeat music)
Is this store profitable?
Yeah, we make money, yeah.
Weirdly.
(laughter)
We're not Apple. But yes we are.
I think what we have is something you really
kind of have to come and see what's here.
I hear this almost every single day here,
"wow, this is like a museum, this is incredible."
It's an experience, they like that.
They like having an experience.
And this is not work to me, this is just fun.