Inside Bowery Showroom with Owner Matt Choon

Fashion is always changing, and the digital age has presented a myriad of new opportunities for entering the world of style. No one demonstrates this phenomenon better than Matt Choon, CEO and founder of Potion CBD and Bowery Showroom.

Choon's journey began with flipping sneakers in 8th grade, and has since snowballed into a career of selling clothes—both vintage finds and pieces from emerging designers. Throughout the pandemic, Choon began posting on TikTok highlighting some of the pop ups he was doing around NYC, selling vintage wear from a lot of the most-hyped brands in the game. As the TikToks continued to grow, so did the interest in the pop ups, which started to draw major crowds whenever they appeared in various fairs around the city.

With the hype showing no signs of slowing down, it became clear to Matt that he needed a full time retail space. Thus, Bowery Showroom was born. "Bowery Showroom is a dispensary. It's a lounge. And it's also a showroom," Choon explains. The space houses his cannabis brand Potion, which features both CBD products and a newer line of THC products. He's also filled the store with a variety of clothes, from high-end vintage pieces to customs and other designs from independent creators that have caught his eye.

Unlike retail locations of the past, Bowery Showroom isn't intended to be just one thing. "The future could be anything. But to me, I feel like we should really enter this digital world and create a space that bridges both of those things," he says, referring to the way that the space is acting as a culmination of his digital and physical presences in the fashion scene.

Bowery Showroom is a retail space, but it also exists as a watering hole for a community of emerging creators in the world of fashion. By encouraging visitors to view the store as a sort of networking space, he's met designers whose work he now stocks.

Creators are rarely only one thing, so it stands to reason that stores should possess a similarly dynamic quality. Bowery Showroom and the TikTok block are demonstrating a potential future of hybrid retail spaces, untethered by notions of what a store should be.