Right after browsing Martha’s Winery for several yrs, longtime New Yorkers Mark Chung and Eric Coles made the leap to yr-spherical Island dwelling in 2017, carrying with them a aspiration to open a small business enterprise. With their backgrounds in style, housewares, retail and pictures, their eyesight for a modern-day-day basic shop came to everyday living on Most important Road in Vineyard Haven when they opened Lennox & Harvey in the spring of 2018. Named for Eric and Mark’s grandfathers, who had been equally jazz musicians, Lennox & Harvey is a curated selection of effectively-designed outfits and residence goods with an eye to sustainability and practical splendor.
Q. What ended up you the two undertaking just before you moved here?
Mark: Before we moved here, we lived in Brooklyn. I was a chef and had a cafe for about 5 yrs. Just after I closed my business enterprise, I worked for a quantity of housewares and home furnishings brands, which include an Italian business referred to as Kartell, and a business called Alessi. And ahead of we moved right here, the greater brand name was Herman Miller, which we market in the keep now.
Eric: I labored in the music field to start with, then trend and afterwards pictures. Currently I even now run a images studio in New York. Bookings are finished by e mail or mobile phone so I can do that and nonetheless be listed here. But I go back again for a pair of weeks just about every month. I worked in fashion for a prolonged time so the notion of the retailer when we moved in this article was that we could meld design and style and fashion into a standard items retail store.
Sustainable apparel is section of the mix.
— Jeanna Shepard
Q. When did you first arrive to the Winery?
Eric: We very first rented in the summer season of 1995 and saved coming up below just about each 12 months. We would fall off some decades and then appear back again with extra pals and occur again on our personal.
Mark: We started out leasing homes in Oak Bluffs and then the previous home we rented was off Lambert’s Cove. Which is the place we fell in adore with currently being capable to stroll to the seaside.
Eric: And then we purchased our home in 2015. We’re in Oak Bluffs, not considerably from The Sailing Camp. We started out coming up in this article as late as November and as early as March and we beloved it as much as we did in the summer. We assumed, “Oh, we could reside right here.” But we had to figure out a supply of earnings. We experienced constantly preferred to open a shop – a menswear retail outlet in Manhattan – but there was as well much opposition and it was far too costly. Then we assumed we’d do it a number of several years afterwards in Brooklyn, but once more – way too a lot competitors and also high-priced.
Q. But at previous, you opened Lennox & Harvey in 2018. How did the pandemic influence the last few of a long time?
Eric: We were being actually lucky since we opened our on the net small business the exact day we opened the storefront. We often experienced a web page where you could purchase every thing. When men and women couldn’t go into the store, a whole lot of them desired to assistance little firms like us so they started off purchasing online.
Mark: We truly commenced providing to persons all in excess of the Island. They could buy on the internet and we would deliver it to them! It was sort of fun for us and kept us hectic until eventually we were being in a position to open the doorways in August of that very first Covid yr.
Video games, beach front merchandise, espresso makers, furnishings — diligently picked merchandise for the residence are on show at Lennox & Harvey.
— Jeanna Shepard
Q. How would you describe your retailer to all those who may not know about you?
Eric: We call it a modern-day-day typical goods store, with necessary objects for the property, the seaside and the overall body. It harkens back to the aged-time typical shops where you could get an apron or instruments or sweatshirts or cleaning soap. We have all those classes but at an elevated amount.
Mark: The only factor we really don’t offer is meals!
Eric: But we have gorgeous points for the back garden, wonderful sweaters, an apothecary part with suntan oil, pores and skin-care items.
Mark: You can get household furniture, you can obtain a coffee maker, sun shades, it’s all diligently blended in.
Q. What would you say have been some of your most preferred items?
Eric: The initial factor that will come to mind is dresses. Since this neighborhood is really beachy and casual, we believed it would be great to stock quite uncomplicated, kind of flowy, interesting, casual, outsized dresses – terrific for the seashore, great for dinner. And as it turns out, they have been very preferred.
Mark: Sales of our men’s garments, like sweatshirts and pants, have grown far too. We look to have figured that out, so that’s been anything that is long gone actually well for us in the previous yr or so. We also provide a ton of blankets and pillows and little presents, like housewarming and hostess presents.
Q. What do you believe will fly off the shelves this season?
Eric: It’s so difficult to say mainly because typically we’ll be hunting at one thing to buy and say, “Oh, this is awesome, we love it!” and nonetheless when we put it in the retail store, nobody cares! So you just cannot seriously say, “Oh I know this will fly off the cabinets.” If you say that about nearly anything, that’s what you are going to be left with.
Q. Sustainability has come to be a large concentrate below on the Island. Do you have products and solutions that fill that bill?
Eric: We do, in fact. For the reason that this is such a worldwide situation, most of the makes we have are creating products in a sustainable way. We have a botanical skin care line named Salt and Stone, and they don’t use any aluminum in their merchandise. The packaging for their deodorant is produced of plastic, but of recycled plastic that arrived out of the ocean.
Mark: They also use renewable energy to manufacture their goods. We also carried a line of sweaters in the fall that ended up all produced with recycled cotton and cashmere.
Eric: That ethos is represented in most of the models we have and certainly in us as well.
Q. Are there worries to accomplishing enterprise right here?
Mark: Possibly shipping and delivery – which is a challenge. When we provide household furniture, it comes in excess of but it’s a for a longer time procedure. It charges a minor little bit additional just to get it on the boat. So that is a person of our worries – massive parts of furniture.
Eric: Logistics, indeed, is a person matter. An additional is that we sort of have 3 unique business enterprise climates below. When we open up the store in Could, the May perhaps-June consumer is unique from the July consumer, and that consumer is different from the August client. And then the October customer is different as well. So you have to consider when acquiring things for the store – which season will this in good shape in? That is not one thing we essentially assumed about right before.
Q. What do you appreciate about what you do?
Mark: I enjoy finding new makes, getting issues that are exciting and that people adore. Over the previous four decades, we’ve achieved so a lot of remarkable men and women and I love seeing them occur back to the retail outlet year immediately after 12 months. I like the link that we have built.
Eric: I concur, the men and women we have satisfied. I was included with the Island Housing Have faith in for a few of several years. The other matter we equally love is style and design. When a merchandise is definitely very well built and thoughtfully designed, that actually gets us energized.
Q. When you’re not operating, what do you love to do?
Mark: I appreciate going to all the farms. That’s my most loved detail to do. There are so numerous good farms right here and so significantly new food. And then there is the seafood! I adore clams, so I go clamming as well.
Eric: I like to swim. I like the ocean so a great deal that I swim from May possibly to November. When it’s far too cold soon after that to stay in, I will continue to do a plunge a pair of occasions a week to invigorate myself. I love it.
Q. And what do you enjoy about this Island?
Eric: The sense of community listed here is pretty potent. As much as we had our buddies in New York metropolis where we spent most of our life, I by no means obtained the perception of community that I get listed here. And I truly feel like you can only get it in a position like this.
Mark: Correct. I feel everybody listed here desired us to endure and prosper. Everybody we achieved instructed other close friends, and people today listened to of us by word of mouth. They required to make certain we did well.
Paula Lyons is a former television customer journalist residing in Vineyard Haven.