In Business of Home’s series Shop Talk, we chat with owners of home furnishings stores across the country to hear about their hard-won lessons and challenges, big and small. This week, we spoke with Kate Loftus, the principal of Pepper Design Co. and one of the three owners of the Boise, Idaho–based retail store Scenic. The Storied Home.
It could be an ego disaster: Three creative women, each with their own separate interior design business, decide to launch a retail shop together. But to hear Loftus tell it, running Scenic with Maren Swank and Kasey Fitzgerald since 2023 has thus far been an exercise in comfort and camaraderie, as they found in each other kindred spirits who love shopping for vintage pieces and helping clients discover their personal style. Ahead, Loftus explains how the shop came about, how the trio balances responsibilities with one living in Europe, and why she resists the current trends in Boise (but loves so much about the small city).
What was your career like before the shop?
My background is in luxury hospitality, commercial and residential design. I started my career with Wynn Las Vegas, working with Roger Thomas, before moving to Boston and working on residential projects there. I had my son in 2017, started Pepper Design, and then moved back to Boise in 2018, where I have been focused on boutique hospitality and residential projects.
How did the three of you meet and decide to open a shop?
Maren was doing pop-up events, like pop-up vintage furniture, and I stopped by when I first moved to Boise. We became fast friends, and I helped her with her second pop-up. Kasey met her the same way. After Maren and I collaborated on the pop-up, we started a peer group for interior designers, and that’s where I met Kasey. Right before Covid, Maren asked if we wanted to share an office space, which was perfect for both of us. At the time, I had a 2-year-old and was working from home, so I loved the idea of sharing a space so my dining room table wasn’t full of samples.
We shared that space for five years, working on our independent design firms, and shared assistants at one point. As a sole proprietor, it’s nice to have another friendly designer to bounce ideas off of. We became very close. We joked about doing more than a pop-up one day and opening a store, and when the space next door became available, we thought, “Should we just do it now?” That’s how Scenic was born. We saw the opportunity and decided to pool our savings and jump in.
On April 2, don’t miss your opportunity to connect with bookkeeping guru Jason Masonek on all things numbers related to running an interior design business. Click here to learn more and remember, workshops are free for BOH Insiders.
Boise’s so small, and there are not really any showrooms. I’d worked in Boston a long time, and Maren was [previously] in Chicago, so we were both missing that showroom-sourcing experience. There aren’t a lot of places to shop for furniture in Boise, either. We wanted to create a hybrid space where other designers could bring their clients, see a lot of options, and customize things—as well as anyone off the street looking to buy a sofa or gifty things.
How would you describe the aesthetic of the store?
The store has a layered, collected-over-time feel. We like to mix vintage and new. We like items with history, we like clean lines, a hint of character. We focus on a lot of handmade items from small makers that aren’t represented locally. We’re on the outskirts of downtown and right next door to our design offices. It was important for us to bring something new and unique to Boise while still [choosing items that feel] natural for our community. We embrace a lot of color, trying to offer inspiration beyond the white sofa, and creating a space that feels inviting and thoughtfully curated. It is very different from a typical furniture store. Normally you see a lot of white and beige, but we try to make it inspirational and get people to think outside of the box.
How do you source?
We still go to markets like Vegas and High Point, because nothing compares to seeing things in person. We do order a few things online from Faire—gifty stuff. Kasey [now] lives in the Netherlands, and she’ll send us boxes of vintage items pretty regularly. Anytime Maren and I travel, we are constantly looking at estate sales, antique stores, thrift stores. We source all over. We don’t really like to buy vintage locally and resell it, so we take the opportunity to bring something new in when we’re traveling, since Boise’s pretty remote. And we read every design magazine. We just live and breathe it.
Who’s your customer base?
We have a 50-50 mix of interior designers and homeowners. We do get foot traffic, but we’ve had construction since we first opened. We’ve tried to be industry-friendly and provide product support for other designers, but Boise is a small town, so we get a wide range of customers. People will be walking by to go to the coffee shop next door and say, “Oh, I didn’t know you were here,” or people who are actively searching for furniture find us on Google Maps.
What is the design scene of Boise? Is there a certain look that everyone’s going for?
I’d say modern farmhouse is pretty popular here, which a lot of the furniture stores are doing. We’re trying to provide other inspiration, because [modern farmhouse is] very trendy. There are quite a few designers, and Boise is growing very rapidly, so there are a lot of stylists and stagers. We know many of the designers, which is great, and we’re trying to provide a space where they can actually bring in their clients and show them more than just what their Pinterest board has been feeding them. Get them to think, “OK, what do you want your home to say about you?” more than, “My neighbor has this and I like it.”
Tell me about a vendor or vendor relationship that you treasure.
We have so many. Our store is primarily made up of vendors we’ve worked with for years. We have a custom workroom out of L.A. that offers full upholstery customization, and we’ve worked with them on design projects since 2018. They’re called The Tac Room, and they are truly wonderful. It’s bench-made, and you can customize every piece to the inch—if you like a base on one of their sofas, they’ll put it on another one. We also carry Lee Industries, which is a wonderful product. Locally, we have a rug supplier named Augusto Fine Rugs. She is truly wonderful. You can just get a wide range of styles, and they’re high-quality rugs. We carry little lines, like Bushyl, which makes these beautiful diffusers that smell amazing. Those are a few off the top of my head that we love.
I imagine you each came into this with your own vendor relationships, so how do you decide who runs point with which vendor?
We’re all finding new vendors all the time, but we’re very collaborative. Every designer has a different style, so I don’t mind sharing sources, and neither do Maren and Kasey. We share things with each other all the time through email, and we have biweekly phone calls. We’ve developed these strong relationships with reliable vendors and handpicked the few that we felt would translate well into a retail setting.
Is there a certain item or category that you can barely keep in stock?
Vintage sells very quickly. It’s just gone. We also have a great candle line called Evermore. You can definitely find them online, but they have a really complex scent, and they’re very unique and pretty. We’ve restocked those quite a bit over the last year. We’ve also recently started carrying Homecourt room sprays, which people are loving. Our throw blankets always sell out fast.
What about your own favorite category?
I also love vintage. Because I handpick those pieces, I have a soft spot for them. We carry dining tables from a small vendor out in Maine, and we have this beautiful round walnut dining table with a shaped leg. We were actually named one of the most beautiful home stores in Idaho by House Beautiful, and they used a picture of that dining table. It’s one of my personal favorites. It’s just such a pretty base, and I love walnut.
What’s your e-commerce presence?
We weren’t really planning to do an e-commerce site for another year or two, but our downtown is being revamped and we have had construction in front of our space for the last eight months, so we decided to launch it earlier. Right now, we offer a limited selection of products online. We’re still trying to grow that side of the business. It’s not necessarily the priority, but just a place where people can come and see what we offer. We do ship nationwide. We have such a large custom program, and we haven’t figured out an easy way to do that with our e-commerce. If people see something on Instagram or something on our website, they can always call or email to purchase, but [e-commerce is] for ready-made stuff. It’s a very small, pared-down selection. We’re still working on it.
It’s a lot of work.
It’s a lot of work! It’s like a whole third part of our business that we weren’t expecting to do right away. But since it’s been difficult to get to our space, it can’t hurt.
Are any of the three of you at the shop regularly? What’s your approach to staffing?
It’s been tricky to find someone who can wear a lot of different hats. Maren and I live in Boise, so we alternate each week in the store while still running our design businesses and balancing projects. Kasey is remote in the Netherlands for another year, and she plans a lot of our events and manages most of our social media—the stuff you can do remotely. We’ve had one part-time sales associate, and we recently hired a new full-time person to allow Maren and I a little more time for our design projects.
Your brand has a very distinct look—very traditionally romantic, with a lot of pink and nature prints. Did you work with a branding firm?
We used a company called Saturday Studio, and they were wonderful to work with. They created all our little emblems and helped with the typography. As far as the overall look of the store, the pinks and mural, it came very organically [between the three of us]. We’ve tried so hard to make something that feels very different than anything else that anyone in Boise has seen. We take all of our own social media photos and videos, and manage all that in-house. I built our website.
Are there any challenges that are specific to Boise? It sounds like the construction is a big one right now.
That’s almost over, and we’re looking forward to it. Again, modern farmhouse is so popular here, and while we appreciate that in the right setting, I have always firmly believed that creating a home that reflects your own unique story is important. It should be about true expression, and making a space that you love. That’s a challenge. If you’ve never left Boise or have always been in a small town, you don’t really know what’s out there. Our goal is to help customers explore what they truly love and what resonates with them, rather than just following what’s popular.
And shipping is a challenge. Shipping costs to Idaho are pretty high, which can make sourcing certain things more difficult. That’s something we’re always struggling with.
What are some of your hopes for the future of the business? Would you want your own line?
We like to work with small makers, and we had a line of nightstands and side tables with a little coaster built in. We love the idea of continuing to create these products. I think [running] a home store is not for the faint of heart. There are a lot of small, family furniture stores closing left and right, but we feel optimistic. We hope people continue to focus on quality over quantity, and we’re excited to be able to offer this wide range of customization that I had never experienced in a furniture store. I feel like it’s definitely a new concept for our area. So we haven’t thought about expanding into other cities or anything like that; we’re just trying to support our community and continue elevating the home design industry here and supporting those working in our industry. We love Boise.
What’s your favorite day as a shop owner? When do things feel like they’re humming?
I feel like that every day! I love being in the store. The days we get to reset and reorganize and restyle are always fun. I love Saturdays. As much as I don’t love to work on Saturdays, I do love when I don’t have a bunch of emails coming in and I can connect with customers and chat with people and give them design advice—be more focused. We also do events and workshops, so those are nice days: We’ve had calligraphy, cocktail-making classes and embroidery. Connecting with our community is really fun.
