HOME & COTTAGE
Wicker Emporium: It’s a shopping experience! Words by Amanda Lee Photos by Evan Ceretti and Jenna MacFarlane
▲ Cedalia Brum, manager
W hen the original furniture company, Stephanie Briggs, knew it was a great opportunity to offer unique furniture to homeowners on PEI. The Wicker Emporium name may have been retained, but once you step inside this Charlottetown Wicker Emporium store closed in November last year, the CEO of a Montreal-based
The store houses a treasure trove of handpicked, handcrafted furniture and décor. “That’s what makes it a really unique and special shopping experience,” says Briggs, who owns CCBS Imports, a company that buys directly from sources across the planet, and offers a huge variety of products all under one roof. There’s an eclectic mix of décor, as well as statement pieces of furniture for your home— for example, contemporary live-edge rosewood dining tables, accented with stainless steel legs, or a huge, reclaimed- wood dining table fit for a country mansion. As you’d expect from a boutique store in a Maritime province, Wicker Emporium also stocks nautical-inspired accessories, including pillows and throws.
piece is unique to its new owner to treasure, and you’re unlikely to see or find it elsewhere. This reinvigorated store has a focus on “unique” solid wood furniture at a great price point. Briggs says it’s a “go-to destination” to get inspiration for current—or future—home furnishing and decorating projects. Items are specifically made for the Montreal-based importer, or carefully hand- selected by Briggs on her travels around the globe. The store also carries unique products by Canadian designers, such as wine glass holders and clocks fashioned from original oak wine barrels. “There are so many areas of the world where pieces are sourced and bought to fill this four thousand square foot store,” says the owner.
furniture and home décor store, you’ll quickly realize it’s not quite the same.
The store replicates the feeling of hunting through an exotic bazaar in one of the many faraway, exotic lands where the company sources its products, such as Indonesia, Croatia, Mexico, Vietnam, or even a crowded street market in Rajasthan, India.
Briggs wanted to provide a truly one-off shopping experience, such that each
Briggs says she started the import business nearly ten years ago, with Mexican pine
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www.pei-living.ca FALL 2019
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