A Long Time Coming, I'm Opening a Shop
I'm one of three business owners opening El Cerrito Supply Co, a shared retail space in El Cerrito, this fall. If you follow The Little Hill, you already know about it. What you haven't heard is what I'm working on. So here's the rundown.
I have always wanted a little shop. Six year old Erica would be thrilled to know it actually happens, just a little later than planned.
I have always wanted a little shop. Six year old Erica would be thrilled to know it actually happens, just a little later than planned.
I was one of those 90s girls with a dollhouse and way too many friendship bracelets, and that turned into art class, staying late for projects, entering (and sometimes winning) drawing contests. But my parents were teaching me the other half the whole time: painting rooms, building a shed, even installing a gas line, the kind of stuff most kids never get handed a tool for. By the time I hit my industrial goth phase in high school, hammering paint and metal onto a coffee table for a surface design class, both halves had basically merged into one thing.
As an adult it's been about designing my own spaces. I'm an introvert, I'd stay home forever if I could, so the space has to actually work.
I've been building Hennai in fits and starts for years, between jobs, during jobs, through every version of me. This is just the point where it stops being fits and starts.
I'm opening a shop within a shop at El Cerrito Supply Co. About 100 square feet of things that smell good, garden and plant goods, paper goods and craft kits, cookbooks, small accessories, tabletop pieces, textiles, and bath and body. A little of a lot, all worth keeping.
Every piece comes from someone small trying to make it work, same as me. Everyone deserves nice things, not just the people willing to spend the most for them. So you shouldn't have to choose between nice and affordable.
Garden design. Shifting shape a bit. Full landscape plans aren't really compatible with spending real time at the shop, so I'm scaling down to smaller, more manageable work: garden beds, containers, the stuff I can actually finish in an afternoon instead of a season. I'll also be hosting some analog activities in the space itself, craft projects, terrarium builds, that kind of thing.
A tool library, sort of. The long shot I've wanted to build for years, starting small, with a tool wall built around what people actually ask for. Read more on why I'm excited about this.
One more thing. Sign up below to stay in the loop, and there might be some goodies in it for you along the way.