Wicker Emporium Shutting Down Stores After 47 Years In Business
Wicker Emporium has announced the company is closing locations in Atlantic Canada after more than 45 years in business and having a liquidation sale on all remaining home decor items.
“[We] will be going out of business,” says a statement posted on the company’s website. “We are having a massive liquidation sale … offering large discounts on all items and hope you will come and take advantage of these savings. We thank you for being a loyal customer for the past 47 years that we have been in business.”
Wicker Emporium has stores in cities through Atlantic Canada: Moncton, Fredericton, Charlottetown, St. John’s and Halifax.
A Saint John store is now independently owned and operated and will remain in business.
Madan Kapahi opened the first store in 1972 so he could share home decor items from his home country of India with his new friends in Nova Scotia. He arrived here as an immigrant to practice law and began looking for traditional wicker furniture to decorate his home, “a comfortable and appealing reminder of home,” it says on the company website.
He saw the potential for a good business and launched the first store in Halifax’s Scotia Square Mall.
Wicker Emporium just recently shared a short interview with Kapahi on YouTube, and he spoke about why he opened the first store.
“I like the product. I was used to wicker,” he said. “It had been used for centuries in Asia. People don’t throw away wicker. They paint it and keep it. So I thought there’s a useful product which was not available in Halifax.”
Huddle reached out to the company to learn more about the store closures but hasn’t heard back yet.