life & style
Bird house
Homewares favourite Bowerbird is soaring this autumn, as it ushers in both new collections and fresh management, writes Adele Brunner.
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ven if you think you’re perfectly happy with your home furnishings, spend any length of time at Bowerbird Home and you’ll have the urge to chuck them all out and start again. From gorgeous Belgian linen sofas to the brand’s signature blue-and-white porcelain accessories, the 5,000-square-foot flagship store in Horizon Plaza, Ap Lei Chau, is filled with tasteful East-meets-West collections of all kinds of irresistible treasures. Before you know it, you’ll have spent an hour looking at cushions alone and have a wish-list as long as your arm. A firm fixture on Hong Kong’s homeware scene, Bowerbird Home continues to go from strength to strength. While its founder Philippa Haydon, who moved with her family to Sydney earlier this year, remains a creative force within the company, the brand is now in the capable hands of co-owner Martin Graham. “I bought the majority of the company in January. Philippa decided to relocate back to Australia and I was moving back to Hong Kong so it was win-win all round,” says Graham, who set up a sourcing business in India (where he lived for 24 years), supplying home furnishings to household names such as The White Company, Zara Home, Laura Ashley, Ralph Lauren and House of Fraser. “Philippa is the brand ambassador and the creative director; she and her team put together the aesthetics of Bowerbird Home. I provide the expertise to build on the brand and its inventory, and expand it in various 60 expat-parent.com
ways. As well as adding my suppliers into the mix, we’ve travelled throughout Asia sourcing products so we’ve been able to widen our database.” What this essentially means is that customers will be treated to even more variety on the Bowerbird Home theme, with a greater number of items made exclusively under the company name. These started to appear in-store in mid-September and will continue to roll out throughout this month. Already the exclusive supplier in Hong Kong
We’re trying to be a bit more grown up with two major new collections a year. of Wedgwood Home’s textiles and wallpapers and Kerrie Brown’s decorative art pieces, Bowerbird Home is also looking to work with other established and up-and-coming names. “We are definitely keeping all the old favourites as well as bringing in new and fresh ideas,” says Graham. “We’re also trying to be a bit more grown-up by having two new major collections a year - autumn/winter and spring/ summer - as well as the Christmas range, rather
than randomly bringing things in.” Another new feather to Bowerbird’s nest is its exclusive collaboration with Hong Kong interiors styling team, The Home Stylist. Alex Sheldon and her team offer professional styling and furniture rental advice to create welcoming homes, inspiring office spaces and stylish investment properties. “We aren’t stylists but working with Alex means we can offer a one-stop shop,” says Graham. Hong Kong’s retail market, he continues, hasn’t been the easiest to negotiate but the brand’s well-priced, high-quality products means it has been insulated from the worst. To this end, Bowerbird opened its flagship at the end of August and had a soft launch of its online store at the beginning of September. Graham is looking to open a second shop in a more mainstream location as well as assessing the possibility of expanding elsewhere in Asia. “It’s really exciting putting everything into place,” he says. “Hong Kong isn’t a huge market like the US or Britain is - it’s just a city, but it’s a very sophisticated one. People are aware of international brands but, for me, it’s all about bringing in something different. We want to bring a newness and freshness into Hong Kong homewares and create a reason for existing and new customers to come in.” Bowerbird Home, 8/F, Horizon Plaza, 2 Lee Wing Street, Ap Lei Chau, 10.30am-6.30pm, Monday to Sunday, bowerbird-home.com.