Commercial Real Estate & Advisory
Commercial Real Estate & Advisory
Call it a Lip Smackin’ good lease for SoHo.
The Lakeland, Ohio-based teeny-bopper cosmetics company Bonne Bell – known for its 32 fruity flavors of lip gloss – is moving into its first offices in New York City.
The 3,400-square-foot penthouse at 155 Spring St. is already a glamorous spot, thanks to its former occupants – SFI Creative, the ad agency and corporate branders, which moved to 43 Clarkson St.
“They wanted to be in SoHo,” said Christopher Owles of Sinvin Realty, who with cohort Bruce Sindar represented both sides.
“They want to catch the pulse of the fashion trend, so they hired great new staff and will be developing new concepts.”
Olive & Bette’s is across the street and captures the same young teen demographic that eats up Bonne Bell’s people-tested, gloss line, Lip Smackers.
Its first flavor, strawberry, became top banana with the pucker-up crowd, who rapidly loaded the company’s products into pint-sized purses.
Although 155 Spring is only six stories high, the wide-open loft on the sixth floor leased by Bonne Bell has sun-washed southern skyline views, and an internal floating staircase going up to its private roof-top deck.
Other fashion-forward tenants in the building, including Alessi, an Shiseido Studio, which gives out free samples in the building’s storefront – have access to an additional roof deck. Bonne Bell was founded in 1927 by Jesse G. Bell, who named it after his daughter, Bonne. It came to New York to tap the Big Apple talent market that simply wouldn’t make the move to the Midwest.
Caroline Banker of Insignia Douglas Elliman, a retail broker familiar with the L-shaped 155 Spring St. where Charles Jourdan also has a store said, “Bonne Bell fits into the whole skin-care and cosmetic happenings in SoHo.”