Evan Sheely the owner, has had some health issues and that's what's caused the store to close, not economics.
I'll miss him, he was a great help to me in getting a couple of my 'Birds and he always had some fun stories to tell about being in TKO.
His for partner Chad Beeler has a new bass only store open in West Seattle, not the scale of BNW yet but give him time.
It's nice to know that I'm wrong about THAT gloom and doom; I know health issues firsthand. There used to be a local music store, Rik's Music, the same ones who became semi-famous on TB right before I was shown the door (but weren't affiliated with payola-Marbass-gate). The store's owners, both named Rick, split with the logo going to the brick and mortar moving from a strip mall to a converted steakhouse and RMS is now the mail order darling of the preteen crowd, IOW, the part of the business that got famous online, with a storefront I've never visited. The old strip mall store was heavenly back in the day; I remember a full display of mid 80's Fenders, Strat, Tele, Jazz, and P-Bass all in the two-tone salmon- burst with white pickup covers in the basses above the Trace Elliot bass amps that sold like crazy in the first incarnation of the strip mall store, which later expanded before the split. My first bass actually was bought from one of the owners who was a manager at the long-closed Morrell Music (the "sister store" survives in Johnson City). Before that, Knoxville had a legendary place called Huegley's, but that was before my time.