[imagesource:sexandthecity]

One of the coolest private members clubs in New York City is heading for closed doors.

Soho House, built in an old electrical warehouse in the Meatpacking District, has been the scene of celebs, scandals and plenty of cocktails over the last 20 years, with the ladies from Sex and the City giving it a major launch into popular culture.

Once endorsed by the iconic TV show, the club exploded into cool in the Big Apple and stayed at the cutting edge for years but now members are saying it has finally lost its edge. Even Wall Street is betting against it.

The New York Post reported that the once-cool club is “facing an existential crisis” according to a damning report from a Wall Street short-selling firm that is betting the company’s stock price could fall to zero.

 

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Worse still, several New Yorkers interviewed by The Post confirmed that the situation is dire:

“Vibe is off. Mostly crowded and the scene feels oddly the opposite of creative,” one New Yorker in the fashion industry, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said of the current club.

“You need a flare gun to get a waiter’s attention,” another source in the music business said of his ability to order cocktails that cost more than $20 a pop.

The disses get even deeper:

Another source who works in politics suggested late night drinks at the Meatpacking location to meet a young woman with questionable taste, “She’s far from a bastion of culture and even she called it basic.”

That one hits where it hurts.

“I have a friend who is an analyst at a bank and he still likes it,” the source in the music business added. “But he’s a finance guy so he doesn’t really know what’s cool.”

Ouch. And to think the club once drew in celebrities like Taylor Swift, Justin Timberlake, Jessica Biel, Leonardo DiCaprio, Megan Fox and Tom Cruise. Meghan Markle even went on her first date with Harry at one of the London locations.

Earlier this month, Soho House faced a fresh financial challenge when Glass House, a Wall Street research firm known for short-selling, issued a stark warning that the company’s shares might ultimately plummet to nothing.

In response to Glass House’s prediction, rumours emerged suggesting that Soho House, a New York Stock Exchange-listed entity, could potentially be privatised by its majority shareholder, billionaire film producer Ron Burkle. Soho House swiftly dismissed the Glass House report, asserting that it was laden with inaccuracies.

For some time now, Soho House has been a target of disdain among affluent New Yorkers, but its reputation hit a new nadir following its 2021 initial public offering, as the company shifted its focus squarely onto revenue generation.

The members club, which requires aspiring members to submit an application and list existing members as referrals, ballooned by more than 100,000 people during Covid.

It now has a total of 255,363 members including those at Soho Works and Soho friends worldwide at the end of 2023 — which long-term members say eliminated the club’s aura of exclusivity.

As soon as Soho House “opened the floodgates” – as one member describes it – a handful of shiny, new clubs opened in NYC like ZZs, Zero Bond, Casa Cipriani and Aman, creating a stark contrast between hot and not.

A member suggested, the older locations need to be “totally refreshed and cancel all the members they accepted during Covid.”

“Slashing members would help the brand but hurts profit… seems like a broken business model,” a director at Glass House Research, the firm behind the report, told The Post.

And just like that (yes, that’s a SATC reference), the up-to $5,163-a-year club is now uncool. That’s almost R100,000, by the way.

[source:nypost]