From side hustle to retail destination, this homewares store is flourishing on The Parade

Kathy Pengelly has always had an excellent eye.

Though she never had any official training in interior design, friends and family always knew to ask for her expert opinion when they were redecorating.

“I've done it all my life and people kept telling me I should do it professionally, so eventually I listened to them,” she says.

With her husband Simon, she launched a staging business and began partnering with real estate agents to prepare homes for sale.

The business quickly grew, and soon clients were asking where they could buy the furnishings Kathy was bringing into their houses.

Because she purchased them wholesale, there was no retail outlet to recommend.

So Kathy started an online store under The Grace Collection Australia name as a side hustle.

Over time, that side of the business “just grew and grew and grew” until the couple decided they wanted to expand into a retail space and moved into an old church on Sydenham Road.

Business was good, but when the heritage-listed building needed repairs last year, The Grace Collection had to find a new home for the business and landed at 154b The Parade.

Moving into a smaller store was challenging, especially with the online side of the business still going strong.

The showroom with large displays has been replaced with a more compact boutique, while an upstairs storage room provides space to process online orders.

“It's a struggle some days,” Kathy laughs, “but we make it work.”

And while most of her customers have followed her over to The Parade, “being in such a prominent area means that we have so many new ones,"

"Every day we get new people coming in saying they haven't noticed us before."

A phenomenal Christmas season reassured Kathy that she'd made the right move by downsizing to an area with high foot traffic, and now she welcomes customers from right across the state.

To reflect that broad appeal, Kathy asked customers to vote for their 24 favourite country towns, then worked with local business The Lion Mill to design candles with fragrances that reflected the signature scent of each.

“We try to stock Australian-made as much as possible, and South Australian if we can,” says Kathy, who also designs a range of cushion covers and sweaters.

“And we do free gift wrapping all year round, so we get lots of boyfriends and husbands and partners who love that!”

That attention to detail helps The Grace Collection to stand out from other homewares stores on The Parade, though Kathy welcomes the competition.

“I feel like it's healthy when you have other shops around that are similar to you,” she says.

“It means you have so many different options, and that encourages me to source things that you won't find everywhere else.”

It's why she is the exclusive Norwood stockist of Noss & Co's colourful hand-painted ceramics, which are one of the store's biggest sellers.

But Kathy says the store's biggest asset is the staff, who she selected with the same discerning eye she uses when furnishing a house.

“We've got some absolutely amazing young girls that work for us, and we get so much feedback from our customers about them,"

They go above and beyond, learning who all our customers are, and they absolutely love them.”

Visit today

154b The Parade, Norwood
W: www.thegracecollectionaustralia.com
I: /thegracecollectionaustralia