Heartwood House finds home on Main Street downtown

Heartwood House, an online storefront and design firm in one, have opened a brick and mortar location in Ash Grove. The office, located on Main Street, Ash Grove, opened their doors in November.
Heartwood House is co-owned by Patti Brown and Mike Brown. The two of them oversee operations and goings-on at Heartwood House, which include architectural design and an online store.
The brand itself began 10 years ago as a store on Etsy, an online marketplace for products of most any nature. Originally they sold over 700 different products in the realm of home decor or other related items. They currently have their products in multiple stores around the area, providing metal signs, decorative vent covers, candles and wood framed canvas signs. Their Etsy store has surpassed 27,000 sales to this point over the course of a decade. This continued on for some time but in August they decided to add another type of business under the brand, design work.

Architecture expansion for firm
Mike Brown has experience in the architecture world, allowing an opportunity for the business’ expansion into a whole new area of operations. Since the addition of this new service, Heartwood House has brought on two team members on the architecture side of things, with some results being showcased on social media. In total, the outfit has seven staff members, some of whom focus on the online store and other who prioritize design. At the beginning though, this proposition was intimidating to Mike, he said it felt like a leap of faith going into business for himself but that his wife inspired him to do it.
“I’m pretty conservative as far as my approach to things,” he said. “She’s definitely not, she pushes me to do a lot of things.”
The two ventures may seem distant conceptually but Mike and Patti say their product sales tie-in when considering their larger vision.
“They’re all related to either decor or products or things in the home.”
Now they can complete their vision for the home by actually designing the spaces in which their products are intended to inhabit. To further this, Mike said that soon, Heartwood hopes to try their hand at the construction side of things allowing them to oversee the execution of the designs they produced in-house. They also feel like their design work serves a niche in the mid-level home design world, where Mike said affordability and authenticity can be hard to come by.

Downtown location
The building that Heartwood House inhabits is located on Main Street next to the newly opened AG Fitness. Though it is currently not an open shop for customers, Mike and Patti do have some options available for purchase including candles and scent wax. They encourage citizens to stop by and say hello. It is out of this building that they work, with both desks for computers that run 3-D modeling software and tables for tallying up orders and boxes.

Future growth
As for what’s next, Heartwood House has multiple projects in the works. They’re ready to begin building with two plans in the design process right now, soon ready to go through the bidding process. They are also gearing up to set up a spec home in Willard.
“I think that’s what we’re trying to do next is really get into [building] and push ourselves out there and build it,” said Mike.