Then and now, they come from all walks of life, she said.
One, she said, told her, “I would go crazy if I didn’t have this store, didn’t have an outlet.”
A couple are single mothers, she said, who find and remake discarded items, or make entirely new goods, for a supplemental income and means to be creative.
She had six children when she bought the store, seven now, so she can relate to wanting to do something other than child rearing or chores.
“Some of these ladies are just stay-at-home moms,” she said. “They’d go crazy if they didn’t have something else to do.”
She came home with the bill of sale and a shop.
“Look, honey,” she recalled telling her husband. “I bought us a store.”
He came around, she said.
Since then, the store moved in its business complex, changed names and, in early August, added another wing.
“We had a waiting list of, like, 50-something people, and people would constantly come in looking to join us,” she said. “But we didn’t have the space for them.”
The added space means more vendors can set up and sell. The shop is organized like an antique mall, she said, even a co-op: Duvall and some vendors take turns working the till and helping customers. There are about 40 vendors.
Most of what they offer is locally made, Duvall said, with some wholesale items and crafting supplies.
Refurbished furniture is one of their biggest sellers. They also have baby clothes, home decor and other gifts. Shoppers come from all around the region, she said, and they get a lot of repeat customers.
It’s all stuff you’re not going to find in a big box store, she said.
One of the vendors, Jessi Jackson, works with a friend on furniture and some jewelry, along with other gifts made from driftwood, old barn paneling, even Christmas ornaments from shotgun shells.
“We like to take something that was old and forgotten, or unloved, and turn it into something pretty and usable again, maybe give it a whole new purpose sometimes,” Jackson said.
They’re both stay-at-home mothers, she said. She worked in real estate, but medical problems forced her to stay home.
A bad pain day might preclude a trip to an office, Jackson said, but with her working at home, all of those projects can wait.
“It makes me still feel like I have some value,” she said. “I can still do something and make something that makes other people happy.”
The store also provides a good social outlet, she said. The vendors get together to restock their booths and tidy up around the shop weekly, and it’s a great means to get tips and constructive criticism.
“That’s kind of our social hour.”
Most of the vendors, she added, are mothers and grandmothers. For them, and for her, crafting these goods has a cathartic quality, in that it’s something they can do because they like to do it.
“This is fun for us, even though it’s a kind of work, and you get dirty and you get sweaty,” she said. “It’s OK because somebody is going to love your effort.”
