Hi-Fi, Wine and Trousers, Million Goods Lands in Fort Greene

Come by on a Friday at eleven and the shop on DeKalb Avenue is still open. From the front door you look across a bar and a listening room to a set of tall windows, and through them to a garden. And there is the bright red spiral staircase, climbing to a floor full of clothes. The question it raises is the point.

This is the new Million Goods, at 201 DeKalb Avenue in Fort Greene. It is part menswear store, part listening bar, part natural wine room, and it keeps the hours of the second and third parts. On Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays it closes at midnight, according to Hypebeast.

A Bigger Room for an Old Idea

Million Goods started small. Drew Kaufmann and Matt Reyer opened the first store in Greenpoint in 2024, a 600-square-foot room at 88 Franklin Street with a wine bar, music and a rack of under-the-radar men's brands. Within a year, WWD reports, they knew they needed more space.

The Fort Greene location is about 2,100 square feet inside a landmarked building. Kaufmann and Reyer chose to keep what the building already had. The tin ceilings, fireplaces, wood floors and that spiral staircase all stayed. Hypebeast reports the space splits into three areas of roughly 700 square feet each, with the bar and listening room on one floor, clothing upstairs and the garden out back.

The architect is Gjergji Shkurti of Figure Ground. He painted the staircase red. "We fell in love with the staircase that could break the store down into two spaces," Kaufmann told WWD.

The finishes are quiet and expensive. Pecan-toned Sapele woodwork. Honed Breccia Pernice stone. Louis Poulsen lamps. Custom aluminum fixtures for the clothes. Emeco stools at the bar. In the garden, the built-in seating works around the existing trees.

The Sound Comes First

The listening room is where Million Goods earns its night. Hypebeast reports that the speakers come from two sources, slim-profile designs by Bridge Street Sound and dual-sided speakers the shop developed itself. Both were tuned by the sound designer Mo Yasin.

The concept came from Kaufmann, who worked at Maison Kitsuné and Bird Brooklyn before this. He told WWD he watched online giants take more of the business every season while independent shops struggled. His answer was the one thing the internet cannot ship. "Hospitality is something tech companies can't do," he said. He had seen listening bars take off in Japan and noticed the rise of natural wine, and he put the two together with clothes.

Reyer came from somewhere else entirely. WWD reports he built and sold an e-commerce company in the automotive world and once booked artists for shows around Denver. He had no fashion background when Kaufmann pitched him. He signed on anyway.

"It is designed for people to slow down and spend time."

That is Kaufmann on the new room. Reyer puts it another way. "The space is designed to ask questions," he told WWD. In Greenpoint, he said, the question was usually what this place even was. In Fort Greene, the windows at the back of the listening floor show off the garden from the front door, and the red staircase asks what is up there.

Upstairs, the Clothes

The answer is a tight edit of independent labels. Hypebeast and WWD name Nicholas Daley, OAMC Peacemaker, Soulland, Rold Skov, Berner Kühl, Margaret Howell, Document and Études Studios among them. Kaufmann told WWD the house rule is clothes that are clean and easy to wear but still have some edge. "Unfussy is a word we use a lot," he said.

He expects an older shopper here than in Greenpoint. WWD reports he pictures the Fort Greene customer in his mid-30s to early 40s, working in what Kaufmann called creative-adjacent industries.

The downstairs wine list leans French, and Fort Greene pours more by the glass than the Greenpoint shop, Hypebeast reports. Investors in the expansion include Arock Castillo, founder of BPM Music, and Malcolm Dia, founder of Manual NYC, according to WWD. London is next on the wish list, the founders said, along with a possible move into hotels.

Brooklyn has seen shops try to become hangouts before. Last month Hermès opened a permanent store on Berry Street built to look like it had always been on the block. Million Goods goes another way. It is a clothing store that would rather you stayed for another glass, and on a weekend it will let you, right up until twelve.

The store is open Tuesday through Sunday from noon. It closes at 10 p.m. on Tuesdays and Sundays and at 11 p.m. on Wednesdays.