A New West home furnishings shop is closing its doors at the end of the year – unless an entrepreneur is ready to jump in and seize a new opportunity.
Champagne Taste Home, located at 1101 Royal Ave., is a full-service home furnishings store that sells a combination of quality consignment items and locally manufactured furniture, and imported area rugs re. Owner Janice Wright recently made the tough decision to close the store in December.
“There's more customers that I could call friends, and more customers that are going to be heartbroken than I could even find the time to call and talk to directly; I know they're going to be shocked,” she said. “It's always been a place people went to feel better, to get a lift. I am a little bit nervous about how they're going to receive the news. I suspect it's going to be really quite sad.”
Wright has owned the business since 2016, when she bought it from its original owner who was retiring. A series of challenges has prompted her decision to close the business.
“I was hoping for a little bit better response to some of the challenges I was facing. The writing was on the wall, and I just had to face it. I'm not angry, and I'm not looking for pity,” she said. “I really want to celebrate what we had in the time that we had it, and know that every everything has its time, and can't go on forever. I'm really sad but understanding that it's time for something else to come in and replace it.”
Wright said a couple of major construction projects that hampered customers’ ability to access the store factored into her decision to close shop. She said Metro Vancouver’s construction of the Annacis water tunnel across the street from the store and the Pattullo Bridge replacement project rerouting of trucks from Front Street to Royal Avenue both impacted the shop’s visibility to customers.
On top of that, Wright said the front of the store was under a tarp and barricade for five months, after a commercial vehicle crashed into the corner of the heritage building. While it didn’t cause any structural damage, she said the process “dragged out” as insurance companies, engineers and others were involved.
“To anybody that might be driving by the store that doesn't know the store, they would think that that was our front door – and it was under tarp for five months,” Wright said. “That didn't help.”
Wright said economic challenges, such as inflation, and changes to the real estate market also impacted her business – as did a growing interest in online shopping.
“The business is pretty ‘pivot ready ‘to the right investor or entrepreneur. Anyone with a vision, appetite and skill set to move this operation more 24/7 in the current space to an automated, direct online presence should seek me out,” she added. “There is an opportunity to leverage the brand, reputation and infrastructure.”
Wright said it’s not her wheelhouse to take the store online, as she more focused on the relationships with her customers.
“I might have been able to turn it that way and operate it more 24/7 from a digital perspective; it just wasn't what I wanted,” she said. “I really enjoyed the space, the people, the experience, the service. And we worked damn hard to take care of people in the best way we knew how.”
Unless someone wants to buy the business, she plans to close shop by the end of the year. In preparation for the closure of Champagne Taste Home, Wright said she has been trying to contact all of the folks who may have consignment items in the shop.
Anyone with questions about Champagne Taste Home – including consignees who have items in the store or anyone interested in taking over the business or subletting the space (the lease is in place until April 2025) – can email Wright at [email protected].
