Frands, Gaardians, we have some news. The brick and mortar Apothecary will be closing down on Friday, December 31st. It may sound of ill omens, but it is indeed glad tidings we bring this season!

The pandemic has made so many of us reevaluate things, and with that, we have decided to lean into the best parts about this place and let go of the parts that we will miss, but letting go of them will let us take flight.

River Peak Apothecary (the shop you pop in to visit) may be going away, but the brand, the product line, the lore, and what we're bringing to our clients all over the world is about to be supercharged in the way that only losing 1700 square feet of rent in a historic district can give a small business.

THE PLAN

We are about to launch a bunch of new products before the end of the year, and will still be carrying a number of our favorite brands even after we return to online-only (Shire Post Mint, Earth Harbor Naturals, Cognitive Surplus, etc.), but many other goods will be going on sale as of December 1st, especially the remaining plants!

After Christmas, it's going to get even more exciting for the folks who keep trying to buy our furniture off us - the shop will turn into a sale on the furniture and decor items we will no longer have room for, and there will be some really beautiful/weird antiques, collectibles and other items available for purchase.

Once 2021 is done, we will be moving a few things around in the back of Beardsgaard to become the home of our production studio, and the entire realm of Beardsgaard crew will be back under one roof.

OUR SMALL BUSINESS STORY

If you don't know the story of this small business, it's been a RIDE. River Peak Apothecary as a business has been in existence since 2015 online, and as the product line of Beardsgaard Barbers. When the space next door to Beardsgaard became available for the first time in 25 years, we jumped on it. River Peak didn't need anywhere near all that space, but Beardsgaard had over a dozen employees at the time, and the shop needed an overflow workspace, laundry room, a lunchroom and more. It was a perfect fit.

Post pandemic, it's a smaller barbershop, shorter shop hours, and the size we want to stay at, but that also means we don't need all this space anymore.

After opening the doors to our brick and mortar shop in January 2020 (worst timing ever), we went through some STUFF. We bootstrapped the funds to open the space, and little more than two months later, we were closed until June for the lockdown.

When we reopened, the city had begun a construction project to redo a large portion of the street, do sewer stuff, and replace the brick sidewalk on our block, which went on for a solid five months, including almost two months of having no front sidewalk and no front entrance right before the holidays. Folks were assuming even Beardsgaard (our well-established sibling ship next door) was closed, much less our new shop. The crumbling, long-ignored exterior of our building didn’t help the confusion.

Another entire redoing of the sidewalk later (including sometimes bi-weekly heavy equipment digging something else up directly in front of our shop) and we're sitting at a year and a half of what feels like non-stop construction outside our front door. We think it's done, but we have said that half a hundred times already. At least we found a future hair model fantasy pirate amongst the construction crew!

WHAT'S NEXT?

Once the doors close to the brick and mortar shop, we get to throw all our energy into expanding the line with the new products we have been working on behind the scenes for so long.

Our eventual product line will include beards (butter, oil, balm, wax), shave (oil, aftershave, aftershave balm), face (exixir, day and night balms), body (butters, scrubs, oils), hair (potion, dry shampoo, pomade), lip (butter, hue) and fragrance products (candles, solid perfume), with multiple scents and formulas of each.

Each of our products has a lot of imagery and lore around them, which are our very favorite part of what we do here, and what connects our small business in Batavia with nerdy customers all over the world who love beautiful, natural products scented in the seasons ('sup, Tim from the Southern Outpost in Australia?)

Unless we did a good amount of hiring and expanded our infrastructure dramatically, that's never going to happen with one maker who is also running a shop during most of the good daylight hours every week. Making good imagery means we have to chase the good light a lot.

So what's next for this space? We don't want to jinx anything, so we can't tell you yet, but there is a very likely new tenant you will lose your minds over, and would be our DREAM new neighbors. Once the details are finalized you will hear all about it, we promise.

But for now, we want to thank this amazing community for all of your support during *gestures wildly at everything*. The weird and wonderful folk of Batavia and beyond who stop by to chat about plants, life, magic, how we're all getting by, while picking up a little pick me up or gift has been the best part of running this little shop.

Even after this shop closes, we'll still see you in Beardsgaard every day, and online even more. We'll see you soon, Realm.