Hip is the new chic in the latest home furnishings and accents from lines like Gus Gus Design.
With a name like Hipster Home, it would be easy to imagine the store’s owner, Dave Friday, bedecked in a daily uniform of skinny jeans and a vintage T, dripping with irony and snark. But the reality could not be more incongruent. “We get a lot of flak for the name,” laughs the congenial 40-something who insists that he looks more like a plumber than a guy who owns one of the area’s most in-demand home décor stores. “People who get us know we don’t take ourselves too seriously. The whole hipster thing—it works great for us.”
In an economy that has pummeled most local retailers, Hipster Home is flourishing. It is fast becoming the go-to shop for cheeky, sophisticated, and decidedly contemporary wares for the home—even if your Birkin bag or Barbour coat don’t really allow you to make the hipster cut.
Hipster Home launched on the scene in the gentrified town of Phoenixville in 2007. Friday and co-owner/girlfriend (of 18 years) Lindsay Herman were both working full-time gigs—he was doing sales for building materials, she was a paint rep—when they opened Hipster Home on the side. After working for many years at Ikea, Bloomingdale’s, and Domicile, Friday was obsessed with design, and Hipster Home was where he could indulge his passion. “We were just real people running with a dream,” he recounts.
They would work on weekends and nights, while his septuagenarian mom ran the shop during the day. But within a year, they both were laid off and decided to concentrate their efforts entirely on the shop. It paid off handsomely: Within three years, they had such success that they moved twice, each time to bigger spaces, until they realized they would have to leave Phoenixville if they wanted to grow their business. “We developed this almost cultlike following,” Friday says in a bittersweet tone. “That’s why it was so hard to leave, and we’ll probably never have that again. But that ran its course.”
The store’s new home is Chestnut Hill, where Friday now has a prime, light-filled corner spot in the heart of the shopping district. After some cajoling by friend Doug Reinke—who owns Host, a nearby furniture boutique—Friday was sold on the quaint town, ideally situated close to both his old client base in Phoenixville and to Center City. “It is the best of both worlds for us. The people of Chestnut Hill are awesome, and they have really embraced us.” Plus, “This is a shopping town. These people are here to hunt, to buy something.”
