During all the hubbub of construction on Main Street, you may not have realized that a few new shops opened up. After all, it’s tough to notice when the street and sidewalks are littered with slabs of bricks, scaffolding, huge trucks and crews of construction workers.
But now that all of that stuff is out of the way (for the winter, anyway) and you can get back to poking around downtown without having to step over ditches and gravel piles, you might want to check out Fifty Home and Marketplace New England.
The two stores opened up while construction was going on – Fifty Home in September and Marketplace New England just a couple of weeks ago – and they want the world to know that they are here and open for business.
With each store, geography plays a key role: Fifty Home sells home goods from all 50 states, and Marketplace New England sells wares either made in or inspired by New England.
“It’s probably about 75 percent New Hampshire,” said Marketplace New England President Laura Miller, who used to own Imagination Village in the storefront one door over.
“What if we could get something from each of the 50 states and have an all U.S.A.-made store,” Fifty Home President Annie Clark said of her original idea for the shop. Clark and her husband have been running Black Bear Micro Roastery in Tuftonboro, a coffee roasting business, for about 20 years.
Both store owners said they like the idea of buying local, shopping local, and that Concord is a city that prides itself on that mentality. And local is a relative term when it comes to these businesses – for Fifty Home, that means made in America; for Marketplace New England, that means (mostly) made in New England. Either way, both shops are packed with American-made goods.
Disclosure: There are some clothing items at Marketplace New England that bear “Made in China” tags and Fifty Home buys from some companies that also carry imported goods, but there is a concerted effort at each store to have as much American-made merchandise as possible. Each store also features many handmade, one-of-a-kind items, mostly made in New Hampshire.
At Fifty Home, you can score paintings by New Hampshire artist Dan Greuling, Clark’s son-in-law. At Marketplace New England, you can pick up custom jewelry made by one of several artists from the Concord area. And on top of it all, when you shop at either store, you know that you’re in the only one in the world – both companies are brand new and locally owned – no big-box chain stores here.
“Over the years, I’ve been paying attention to the fact that we’re losing more and more jobs and we should be supporting our neighbors,” Clark said. “It’s not so much that I’m anti-import, I’m more pro-jobs here.”
“We should develop a market for people that don’t have any place to sell their stuff,” was Miller’s original idea. “There’s a symbiotic relationship here that we can have as a retailer to create a marketplace for lots of different types of products – new artists, established artists – and it kind of just came to be Marketplace New England.”
It seems safe to say that both store owners are big into supporting the local economy – whether that means Concord, New Hampshire, New England or the United States.
But now that that’s been established, what about the products? What kind of stuff from the region is for sale at Marketplace New England? What can you buy from, say, Pennsylvania, at Fifty Home?
We thought you’d never ask.
At Marketplace New England, you can try some Hermit Woods wine from Meredith, if you’re in the mood. If you’re not much of a wino, maybe you prefer the classic New England beverage of coffee milk. You can snag some Dave’s coffee syrup from Rhode Island to whet your whistle. And if you’re hungry, try some Squirrel Squash or Moose Logs from Goffstown. The taste is better than the name. If you’re looking to add some bling to your life, you can choose from dozens of handmade pieces of jewelry, such as Suzy’s Pysanky egg shell earrings – the earrings are made of painted egg shells.
Across the street at Fifty Home, the selection is a bit different. If you need to do some tidying up around the house, check out the black-bristled brooms from Pennsylvania. Need to take a load off? Fifty Home has just the thing: the “Dead Folks Chair,” which was found at Concord Antiques. We hope the reason it’s called the Dead Folks Chair is because the fabric features the likes of Elvis Presley, Jimi Hendrix, John Lennon and other long-gone celebrities, not because whoever sits in it dies. If you have young kids – or just a young soul – check out the Roy Toy earth-friendly building sets from Maine. Need something to bring a drink to the gym with? There’s quite a selection of metal water bottles from Washington state with cool designs on them.
With such diverse product lines and a concentrated effort to buy local, it must be hard to keep the shelves stocked at both stores.
Not so much, apparently.
“Once it starts going, people start reaching out to you,” Clark said.
Miller agreed. In fact, during an interview with the Insider at Marketplace New England last week, a local photographer came in offering to sell some greeting cards featuring New Hampshire nature scenes, but Miller explained that she has a non-compete agreement with another downtown business, and therefore has agreed not to sell greeting cards until May.
And that gets to one of the goals of Marketplace New England – being a good neighbor.
“We’ve talked extensively with Capitol Craftsman and the League (of NH Craftsmen) shop to make sure we’re complementing what they’re doing and not really carrying the same products,” Miller said. “I really do feel that we provide different things, and the New England focus is unique.”
The focus of Fifty Home is also unique – “I’ve never seen another store similar to this,” Clark said.
And both stores hope to grow in the future.
“My goal in Concord is to get 50 items from New Hampshire, as well as the 50 states,” Clark said. She also hopes to one day have a Fifty Home store in every state.
“I think this model could be replicated so that we have several stores around New England,” Miller said. “You just shift the concentration – if we’re located in Portland, Maine, for example, we’d have a higher concentration of Maine artists. . . . Once we approve the model, we could easily expand into other markets.”
Marketplace New England, located at 7 N. Main St., is open 9:30 a.m. to 6 p.m. Monday through Saturday and 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. on Sundays. Fifty Home, at 134 N. Main St., is open from 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday.
For more information, go to marketplacenewengland.com or fiftyhome.com, or search for these businesses on Facebook.
