The NYC boutique is pleasant and the staff are great but it feels a decade or so out of time. A central glass case to stand around (stools were added) and desk or two and some seating hidden in the back with a periphery of museum like wall fixtures. Compare that with the Journe boutique with friendly leather couches in the center of the room or the IWC boutique which is a sprawling library/den like affair or the BP boutique with a bar, the JLC boutique in NYC feels stiff and out of date. Those other brand spaces are expensive and who knows if they generate a return on that usage of square footage but for better or worse that is the JLC's contemporary competition as far as boutiques go.
Combine that aging atmosphere with a pretty lackluster assortment of watches and there just wasn't a good reason to go the boutique even before covid. Maybe all the grand comps and limited watches go right to customers and never make it to the floor like ceramic daytonas which is fine but if you're not going to drive traffic then why have a prime storefront space? If Miami was anything like the NYC or Vegas boutiques then it made sense to close it or remodel it rather than continue to carry a stale concept.
My hope would be that JLC uses these closures as a time to reevaluate and reinvent their spaces and maybe take the opportunity during covid to redesign their boutiques for the future direction of the brand. Imho, the boutiques could/should take inspiration from the recent releases. Refreshes of the master collection, the celeste, new (red) reversos, seem to me to be very thoughtfully done modern but timeless (too conservative?) updates to these pieces. Given these and whatever else JLC has planned, I think the boutiques may do well with a similarly thoughtfully executed modernization to really reposition then as brand extensions vs retail outposts similar to the distinction between espace vs boutique.