Israel Matzav

#BDSFail Israeli stores open and Israeli products sell all over Manhattan

The first Michal Negrin shop in New York City, on one of Soho’s most trafficked blocks, is the latest of a panoply of Israeli companies that have opened up retail outlets here: Next door is Israeli soap and body-products purveyor Sabon, which has 11 stores in New York City and opened its first U.S. store a decade ago. The Michal Negrin boutique is also just down the block from Israeli-owned Café Bari, and a couple of blocks away from Aroma Espresso Bar, which has four cafes in Manhattan and six more in other heavily Jewish parts of the country. But this part of Soho — call it Nachalat Binyamin West — may have the densest concentration of Israeli retail outlets anywhere in the U.S.

Israeli products are increasingly found in the most prosaic American retail establishments. Sodastream seltzer makers are sold in Wal-Mart, Costco and Bed, Bath & Beyond, big-box stores ubiquitous along the sides of American highways. Ahava body creams and beauty products are also sold by Bed, Bath & Beyond, as well as Macy’s and Lord & Taylor department stores, along with the Ulta and Ricky’s beauty supply stores and many dozens of independent pharmacies, even in Arkansas and North Dakota.

Despite the efforts of BDS groups to generate boycotts of products manufactured beyond the Green Line, even Israeli companies that do some of their manufacturing there are finding retail success.

And the Israeliness of many of the products, like Sodastream, is not an overt part of their identity here.

Sodastream, which began selling its seltzer makers in the U.S. in 2002, has more penetration in consumer markets here than any other Israeli product, according to Joseph Altobello, a consumer and household products analyst at Oppenheimer & Co., a U.S.-based investment bank with an office in Tel Aviv.

“Sodastream is the only Israeli name that I would know of” among Israeli products sold in the U.S., Altobello said in an interview. The “Israeli label is neutral. The vast majority of people would view it neither good nor bad. Products succeed on their merits. There are some groups that have issues, but overall, I’ve never had anyone say I’m not buying a Sodastream because it’s an Israeli company. Ever. Where a product is made matters far less than ‘does it make sense for me in my life at this price point?’“

Labels: anti-Semitism, BDS, New York City

posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 11:27 PM