How One Beloved UWS Store Is Navigating the Turbulent Retail Waters

You might call Stationery and Toy at 125 W. 72nd St. a mom-and-pop store. You wouldn’t be far off the mark: The store is a small, family-owned and -operated independent business. But to be exact, the store began as a dad-and-daughter establishment. Starting in 1986, Larry Gomez and his daughter Donna Schofield began building the business together. Since 2014, Schofield has been the owner.

Over those decades, the store has become a neighborhood institution, characterized by a dizzying array of notebooks, wrapping paper, craft supplies, toys, balloons, and the like. If they don’t have it in stock—presto! — consider it ordered. Steady customers keep the store hopping. Schofield has come to love the neighborhood: “People are so friendly! And it’s so family-oriented.” What could go wrong?

Plenty, it turns out. Like other neighborhood merchants, Schofield and her store are now being hit by a retail plague: tariffs. “Covid was a disaster for us, and we are just trying to get out of that now. We’ve been holding our own,” says Schofield. “We’re just coming out of that hole, and I just feel like we’re going to go right back in it with all these price increases.”

Schofield doesn’t mince words about how the new tariffs will affect the store and its customers. “It’s going to be a bad thing, to be honest with you,” she says. At least 75 percent of the products that her store sells are made abroad, many of them in China. The store’s suppliers will be raising prices because of the tariffs, she says, and the store will have no choice but to pass along some of those increases to customers.

“Most of the cheaper stuff that comes from abroad is going to be more expensive,” she says. For example? “Our price for a pad of paper is going to be like $8. I mean, how are you going to buy a pad of paper for $8?”

Schofield says that some products will simply be unavailable: “A lot of toy companies are not even going to bring in merchandise. They’re going to stop bringing in the products because they can’t absorb the fees coming in from China.”

Many people on the UWS will think twice about shopping, she says. “Listen, these kids have a lot of stuff. They don’t really need another board game. They don’t need another stuffed animal. Eventually, customers will have to take that money away.”

It’s not only her store that will be affected, Schofield emphasizes. Other neighborhood store owners will be in the same boat. “Without a doubt, we’re all going to be dealing with it. It’s not going to be just stationery and toys. It’s going to be food, it’s going to be cars, it’s going to be jewelry and watches. It’s going to be a hell of a roller coaster for everybody.”

Still, Schofield leaves the grumbling about Washington’s policies to others. “I don’t get into politics,” she says. “I can’t even begin to tell you how many arguments that people get into in the store over politics, and I have to ask them to calm down or go outside. It really is crazy.”

More than a year ago, Schofield moved to South Carolina to help her father, who has been seriously ill. She is still Type-A about the store, putting in more than 20 hours a week of work from out-of-state, ordering products and the like. On location, the store is being managed by two veteran employees, Gary Rowe, who has worked there for 16 years, and Antoine Ragland, who has worked there for 10 years. “Donna has a keen eye for good merchandise,” says Rowe. “She loves what she does. She tries to make the store feel like a second home to people.” Judging from the crowds in the store, the neighborhood approves.