By Gretchen Webster

WESTPORT — Shoppers in Westport can find a wide selection of merchandise — from clothing and personal-care products, to jewelry and high-end gifts, to artisanal baked goods and specialty foods — plus a robust menu of dining options.

But in the past few years, the town has become a hub for a specific kind of retail shopping — furniture and home design.

There now are more than 25 furniture and home accessory stores in Westport — many opened in the past two years, in a town that occupies a modest 20 square miles. And that doesn’t include related businesses, which sell accessories such as window shades, countertops or art for the home.

The home furnishing businesses, especially larger stores, are located along the Post Road commercial corridor; a “British invasion” of stores with British design accents on Main Street; a cluster of smaller shops near the Post Road/Riverside Avenue junction, and several in Saugatuck. Some are national and global retailers, while others are home-grown shops.

The Sconset Square complex at 15 Myrtle Ave. may have the highest density of home furnishing shops in town, with all but two of its retail spaces selling furniture or home accessories.

Research shows that businesses use specific demographics to determine where to locate their stores, and since similar businesses look for similar demographics, retailers of the same type often end up in clusters. according to David Loranger, an assistant professor of fashion marketing and merchandising at Sacred Heart University in Fairfield. 

“Demographically, businesses cluster toward their target markets,” he said. “It’s business chasing the demographic.”

Plus, when stores of the same type congregate in one area, “Those businesses do better — they end up being a draw for each other,” he said. 

Another factor that may attract furniture and design stores to Westport, Loranger said, is the town’s widely known reputation as an artistic community. 

“Westport became an anchor for creative people,” the professor said. 

Since Westport is geographically compact, considered to be a less restrictive and more creative environment than Darien or Greenwich, with a recent influx of new homeowners, the town is an attractive location for furniture and home furnishings businesses. “It checks all the boxes,” he said.

The pandemic helped drive the boom in home furnishing stores in Westport, according to David Waldman, the developer of both Sconset Square and Bedford Square, a retail complex anchoring the downtown intersection of Main Street and Church Lane.

“During the pandemic, 700 new families moved into town,” and needed to furnish their new homes, Waldman said. And those who already lived in Westport “had more time to think about doing work on their homes,” he added.

“Westport is a very strong market for home furnishings,” he said. “When you get a concentration of similar tenants it happens organically.” 

Matthew Mandell, executive director of the Westport-Weston Chamber of Commerce, compared the local explosion of home furnishing retailers to the historic grouping of different retail businesses in Manhattan.

“It’s sort of like New York City in the 20th Century. There was a lighting district, a fashion district, a jewelry district … a natural grouping occurs,” Mandell said.

When the same type of businesses group together, they are competing with one another, he said, but they’re also working together to attract customers who enjoy having a copious selection of merchandise in similar stores.

Danielle Rothe, with Spruce & Style in Fairfield, said the many home furnishing businesses in Westport are a huge advantage for professionals in her field of interior designers.

“We just go right next door and shop instead of going into New York City,” she said, as she perused merchandise in the new, larger Pottery Barn store on Post Road East.

Another designer, Erica Serotta of Westport, was visiting The Bungalow in Sconset Square with two of her clients, Ben Bonte and Andrew Pistor, who bought an 1850s house in Westport two years ago. 

Westport’s plethora of furniture stores means she can serve clients in one location because there is such a wide selection of offerings in Westport, Serotta said.

And residents looking to furnish their homes, agree. 

“The coolest thing about Westport is that the furniture and home furnishings stores all have differences in style,” Bonte said.

“This store is beachy,” he said of The Bungalow, and since the couple’s house is in the Compo Beach area, its furnishings appeal to their design style. “I’ve been to many stores in Westport. It’s a nice diversity of styles here,” he added.

Having well-known, national retailers also brings customers to Westport, including Norwalk resident Rick Waters, who was shopping Saturday in Crate and Barrel on Post Read East.

“I come to Westport specifically for this particular store,” he said.

Another national retailer, Ethan Allen, opened a Westport store last year. “Westport has become an important location for furniture,” Patricia Birdwell, the store’s design center leader, said a few days before the store’s opening in April 2022. “Having competition close by is not a problem … it creates a one-stop shopping community.” 

Ethan Allen officials had been considering a Westport store for several years, Birdwell said.

That also was true for managers of Jenni Kayne Home, a home furnishing company that opened a store in Sconset Square last September. Jenni Kayne first hosted two pop-up stores in Westport before moving in, said Leonardo Garcia, director of East Coast stores for the business.

The Flat, a home furnishings store with roots in Westport, had moved to Norwalk for a larger space, but recently returned with a new store in Sconset Square last month. Westport’s foot traffic is what drew them back, said Elena John, The Flat’s local store manager.

And when Pottery Barn needed more space, instead of moving out of town, the national retailer chose to remain in Westport, moving from a smaller Main Street location to a newly constructed, larger building at 620 Post Road East, which opened in June.

Oka, a British firm, first shopped around the area looking at other towns to open a store, but decided Westport would be the best spot, according to Emily Hart, the company’s U.S. director of retail. Oka opened a 15,000-square-foot store on Main Street last December. “When we were scouting locations we were interested in being where home design is coming to life,” Hart said. 

Another British store, Timothy Oulton, opened on Main Street last August. 

Before that, Timothy Oulton merchandise was sold at the Lillian August Design Center in Norwalk, Jude Leach, global head of retail for the company, said at the time. “We’re lucky that we already have a great customer base here. … We’re delighted to be opening our first stand-alone gallery in Westport,” Leach said.

Eleish Van Breems, which specializes in Scandinavian furnishings and already has a Saugtauck location, will add to its Westport footprint with a new Main Street store. Its future downtown store at 177 Main St., currently undergoing renovations, is the well-known site of the former Remarkable Book Shop.

Both Mandell and Waldman agreed it’s impossible to tell how all the Westport home furnishing stores will fare over the next few years, but so far their outlook is positive.

“I’m very optimistic about the future of Connecticut and particularly Westport,” Waldman said, “which is why I continue to develop here.”

Freelance writer Gretchen Webster, a Fairfield County journalist and journalism teacher for many years, was editor of the Fairfield Minuteman newspaper for 10 years and teaches journalism at Southern Connecticut State University.