Robb Report | Inside the Old-School N.Y.C. Apothecaries Selling High-End Skin Care, Prescriptions, and More
Ian Ginsberg says he’s in the “feel-good business.” The CEO and President of C.O. Bigelow—the country’s oldest pharmacy—joins me via Zoom wearing a crisp white t-shirt and an Officine Generale navy blazer from his office above their historic Greenwich Village location. With a perfectly manicured head of hair and a million-dollar smile, he proudly shows off an eclectic mix of artifacts the store has generated since it was founded in 1838: one bottle bearing the original embossing still echoed in today’s packaging of the in-house brand; another that used to contain the original musk fragrance from 1905, which his team precisely duplicated for sale today.
Since it opened its doors, Bigelow has served everyone from Eleanor Roosevelt to Lou Reed, who, Ginsberg says, despite his reputation for being a curmudgeon, “loved us.” The iconic pharmacy to this day, counts a who’s who of New York as clients. “These people don’t run their own errands—but the one errand they do run is when they come to Bigelow’s,” Ginsberg says.