After 70 years of serving loyal customers, Lou Goldberg, a Westmount jewelry store, is closing its Greene Avenue doors.
At least two factors led the current owners Joel and Eric Goldberg to close down the shop they inherited from their father – the building where Lou Goldberg is located is going up for sale, and a tough economic climate.
“To go to a new premises would have required us to invest a lot of money in to another store, and I chose not to do that,” Joel Goldberg said.
Joel added that since the Great Recession, customers do not have much money to spend.
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“Families are hard pressed to make ends meet, the middle class as a whole is under the gun,” Joel Goldberg said. “You would have union workers who were earning $70,000 per year, those jobs are evaporating.”
The upper-middle class is the market the Goldbergs were targeting.
“It’s either the very high end, or low end,” Joel Goldberg said. “We’re towards the middle of high end.”
That’s why he decided to do something different, but still in the jewelry trade.
“I have a daughter who has trained as a jewelry designer and she and I will work with our manufacturing company to produce a line of jewelry,” Joel Goldberg said.
As for his brother, Eric, he plans on continuing the retail tradition in Westmount, but at a different location.
“This has always been a very handshake-based business. So I want to try and continue that and pass on that legacy,” Eric Goldberg said.
According to the Goldberg brothers, Montrealers have not forgotten them.
“We just had a phone call, a lady told me, ‘I have the first ring your father ever sold me back on University Street,’” Eric Goldberg said. “To be able to continue that, to me is a beautiful thing.”
Lou Goldberg will close its doors Saturday. The store is holding a clearance sale until then.
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