Why Restaurateurs From France Opened A Pop-Up Home Decor Store in Dieppe
DIEPPE – In Clotilde and Martial Heibing’s pop-up store that opened last Friday, shoppers will find quirky home decor pieces. The space on 50 Rue Marche in Dieppe showcases pieces like a flamingo lamp, colourful pillows that look like sleeping foxes and shelves that are shaped like bulls.
The couple from Lille, France, is selling 200 decoration pieces from 16 European designers and fair-trade suppliers that reflect Clotilde’s eclectic tastes.
“It’s a mix of everything I love, everything I’m passionate about,” Clotilde said. “[The store] is a welcome to my home. It’s more that feeling than a real shop.”
The Heibings launched Impertinent.ca more than a year after they arrived in Canada. In France, they owned and managed 12 restaurants for 10 years. When they turned 50, they wanted a new adventure, so they sold their restaurants and moved to Moncton.
“When you’re 50 there’s not that many places that you can go and have a work visa. So Canada was one of them,” she said. “I like the idea of going back to zero. We used to have up to 50 employees, and now we’re just the two of us.”
The pair chose the home décor business because it’s one of Clotilde’s passion, aside from food.
“I was feeling like I wanted to go somewhere else and I don’t like to do things twice, so why not do decoration?” she said.
Depending on how the pop-up store does, the Heibings might open a similar location in the future. But for now, Clotilde believes having a permanent store might not be beneficial.
Instead, they will sell all the products online by the end of January using a Toronto-based agency to set up a website through e-commerce platform Shopify. The couple also worked with local agencies like 3+, as well as local photographers Daniel St. Louis and Anthony Wang to help with the website.
Eighty per cent of the products are made in Europe, with the rest sourced from fair-trade suppliers. The products will change each season. They’re curated by Clotilde, who describes the products as “cool and unexpected.” The couple chose the name Impertinent.ca to reflect the style of the products.
Impertinent means sassy, so it means when you are out of the line, but not too bad. It’s not being impolite. It’s being on the line. You dare to do things that maybe others wouldn’t,” she said.
The Heibings’ approach to business is much like their approach to product selection. They believe that in business, one has to be unique and embrace the unknown rather than fear competition.
“When you’re different, there’s no competition, there’s room for everybody. I think it’s the good way to go in business because you don’t fear the unknown, you embrace it,” Clotilde said.
In the couple’s journey to start a business, Clotilde decided she had to meet one new Canadian a day. That experiment led to her meeting with marketing consultant Natalie Davison, who lives in the same neighbourhood. Davison now consults the Heibings’ on their new business.
“[The business] is refreshing and exciting because it really reflects Clotilde and Martial,” she said, adding that the product selection isn’t normally found in Atlantic Canada.
The pop-up store is open until December 23.