Special Gifts and Home Décor Section

up to 2,500 square feet.

At The Old Flamingo in Salt Lake City, Utah, Sharleigh Conti is one of nine vendors at a cooperative space filled with eclectic goods. Each vendor rents out an approximately 100 to 200-square-foot area within the store. While dressers, desks, and other large furniture items, particularly vintage items repainted and refinished by artisans, do well throughout the shop, Conti herself is doing very well with 17 different art pieces created by a local artist. “For me, personally, I carry a lot of different wall hangings. What I have right now are some spiritual pieces, some very cool images of bugs, a buffalo, things like that. I’m always carrying a lot of local artwork that people will purchase to decorate their homes.”

She said there is no question at all that people are focused more on home improvement these days. “More and more people are buying items to improve their personal space. I think that people are also gravitating to small businesses to buy those items, certainly they’ve been really great about supporting us here.” She stressed, “When people are home all day, they see their walls and they want to look at something on those walls that’s a little different, something cool and interesting. We have a very different vibe coming into our spaces here, and we have always had a more artinterested crowd than in other parts of town.”

To draw this crowd, the vendors in the store, herself included, have increased use of social media, particularly for larger items. This is an enhancement she led. “We really all had to turn to this when things shut down, to use Instagram, to use Venmo, to offer curbside pick-up. It was something I really helped the others here with doing. And, we keep our price points quite reasonable as well.”

For Jason Shelby , owner and buyer for the 2,000-square-foot Now or Never in downtown Phoenix, Ariz., the top sellers in home décor are ceramics and candles. “We focus on uniqueness in the items we carry from all over the world. These do well for us because we try to offer special items that are just not found elsewhere.” Like other gift shop owners and staff members, Shelby also sees changes in the ways in which people are buying for their homes. “They’re more interested in home décor overall, of course. We weren’t doing as well with those kinds of items - in fact we had toned down what we carried in home décor before the pandemic. But afterwards, we saw sales go

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