by Lifestyle brand Hill House Home has opened a fourth location, in Charleston, SC, featuring Nell’s, a food and beverage concept featuring an old-school coffee and soda bar with a Pick ‘n’ Mix candy wall.
The store, which will carry the Hill House Home fashion and home collections, will be the first Hill House Home store to feature a Nell’s store. The Charleston store, which spans 3,500 square feet, is Hill House Home’s largest location to date and is three times the size of its other store locations. Her other stores are in New York, Palm Beach, Fla., and a seasonal store in Nantucket, Mass.
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Amanda Lindroth designed the new store at 145 King Street, and she also designed the Palm Beach Hill House Home store.
“Creating these in-store shopping experiences that are fun has always been very important to me,” said Nell Diamond, founder and chief executive officer of Hill House Home. “Now more than ever, businesses have a responsibility to offer a different experience in store than they do online.”
While she said online shopping is easy and shipping is fast, the in-store experience needs to offer more.
“I always wanted to see what extra step we could take to achieve it [the in-store experience] that it is very worthwhile for our customers to come into the store. Since our first store, I’ve always dreamed of this idea of having this food and drink attached to it,” said Diamond.
Diamond said the Charleston location was the first opportunity that had space to accommodate a food and beverage concept as well as the product they sell every day.
It is designed as a small cafe where customers can sit at tables and enjoy drinks and treats, and has an upholstered sofa that is a bench. They are offering a range of hot and cold drinks in partnership with Coca-Cola and La Colombe, and the cafe offers snacks and Wi-Fi. There is also Pick ‘n’ Mix candy which contains 25 types of candy.
“I grew up in the UK in London, and Pick ‘n’ Mix candy is a big part of my childhood. There used to be shovels to put candy in a bag. We imported some of my favorite British candies to be in the store,” she said. “You can come in, you can get your coffee, you can get a fountain soda, it was very important to me to have Diet Coke from a fountain, you can get tea and all kinds of fun drinks. Then you can come over and do the Pick ‘n’ Mix part,” she said. The bag has some of the brand’s prints on them.
When asked if she plans to open more Nell’s houses across the US, Diamond said, “If this one works, we’d love it. It felt like a great opportunity to share more of our creative side with our community and bring sweet flavors to the shopping experience.”
When asked why she chose Charleston for her fourth location, Diamond said, “I’ve always loved Charleston. I visited him a few times. It is an incredible town with so much beautiful architecture and history. Many of our customers, even if they didn’t live in Charleston, traveled to Charleston at least once a year. Our customers tell us it’s their favorite destination. We are also in two other resort towns, Nantucket Island and Palm Beach, and we do very well in those two stores. Charleston felt like a natural next step for us when we were given the opportunity to take on our lease.”
In the fall, Diamond said they plan to open another Hill House Home store in Dallas, but it will not have a Nell’s store. Diamond said she plans to try out the food and beverage concept in Charleston and see how it goes.
Addressing current retail business, Diamond said, “It’s great. We had a great experience building this loyal community that calls itself ‘Nation Dress Nation’. They’ve been very supportive of the brand as we’ve expanded and built, so it’s been a fun few years building the business.”
The Nap Dress is a cult favorite that has experienced explosive growth and put the brand on the fashion map. Despite the name of the garment, the Nap dress is not specifically intended for sleeping, but is intended as a comfortable option for the person to wear throughout the day.
Since launching online in 2016 with bedding, Hill House Home has quickly expanded to include wear, accessories, children’s clothing, shoes and outerwear.
Hill House Home has just started collecting wholesale, and the company’s two largest accounts are Shopbop and Saks. They also sell their children’s clothing at Maisonette and sell bridal looks at Over the Moon.
Describing the Charleston store, Diamond said, “We really wanted it to almost mirror an apartment. Nell’s section is almost like your kitchen.” There is also a small section with a bed to display some of the beds and the dressing rooms are a closet area. “It feels really homey and fun. So much of what we do is rooted at home,” said Diamond. “We mainly use residential decorators to make our stores. And they feel as homey as possible.”
In the Charleston store, it’s 80 percent fashion and 20 percent home, which mimics the entire business. “We also have a nice baby business,” she said.
Diamond said they are focused on the categories they are currently in. In a way, swimming, as well as fashion in general, became very successful. The company launched wallpaper a few months ago (wallpaper, fabric and throw pillows). “Everything we do is very printed. We try to apply prints across different categories. Our bedding is our best seller in our home department, and it’s one of my favorite things to make. I’m excited to feature that in our Charleston store. None of our other stores have any bedding on display,” she said.
Diamond expects dresses to be best sellers at the Charleston store and one of their best sellers right now is the Matilda dress, which has a fitted empire waist and flares into a full skirt with lots of movement. “He does that very well and we’ll have a lot of those available,” she said.
When asked where else she wants to open new stores, Diamond said, “We’re looking eagerly but nothing is confirmed yet. Both Charleston and Dallas have been in the works for a long time. We put a lot of time into the design of both of them. We have those two geographic regions, we have tons of customers, so we’re excited to meet them in person and ask them about our product. So many people over the last few years have discovered the House of the Hill through fashion and our Nap Dress. So stores give us the opportunity to introduce them to everything we do, which is so extensive.”
Hill House has no other distribution in Charleston. “What we’ve got in our current stores that are open, we’re averaging 70 percent new customers. Stores are also a great way to meet new customers and introduce them to the brand,” she said.
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