Kuhl-Linscomb
Houston, TX
Whoever said money can't buy happiness simply didn't know where to go shopping.
Gertrude Stein
Magical retail concepts are both rare and wonderful - think Fred Segal or American Rag in the early days, the first Apple stores, Nebraska Furniture Mart, Buc-ee’s, or the Cartier 5th Avenue Mansion.
In the retail sea of sameness, the remarkable is fleeting - FAO Schwartz and Henri Bendel captured the magic for a time - but it’s rare to see someone hold on for decades.
Enter Kuhl-Linscomb:
For the past twenty years this home furnishings/everything store has morphed and grown to dominate three city blocks of central Houston and the wallets of both the River Oaks Range Rover crowd and the fabulous Montrose set.
From Mast Brothers chocolate to Pendleton blankets to Paul Smith readers to Sferra linens to Diptyque candles to John Derian stationery, Pam Kuhl-Linscomb has you covered.
She’s created a retailing marvel - helping stylish shoppers part with their money, whether it’s $38 for a Yeti tumbler or $380,000 for a Hastens Grand Vividus mattress.
The store - or better yet, stores - are a casino-like maze winding through a collection of five buildings:
Houston is a heaving beast of a city - a place that got so big the sprawl turned back on itself and like an incoming flood tide it’s reshaping what was there before. There’s money and grit and ethnicity and style and good food but it’s invisible without dissecting the details.
A cursory inspection reveals only highways, glass high rises, and signs for strip malls and strip clubs. Get in close, though, and pick through the flotsam and jetsam and there’s good stuff. Really good stuff, like Kuhl-Linscomb.
My pal, real estate re-developer, and Houstonian Alexander Ron says:
“Houston is an acquired taste, but if you acquire the taste for it, you never want to leave.”
Kuhl-Linscomb has that effect - on the moneyed class, anyway,
What’s the exit strategy for a business like Kuhl-Linscomb?
Who cares.
The most beautiful feature of the business is that it owns 120,000 square feet of choice Sunbelt land.
Located at the intersection of rich and dense.
When the time is right, I imagine they’ll fetch somewhere north of $300 per square foot for their property.
$36,000,000.
There won’t be coupons, discounts, or a buy one/get one. The last Kuhl-Linscomb sale will be their best ever.
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