Commute Home, the Queen West design and furnishings shop behind the looks of
Kultura,
Nyood and others, has moved from its decade-old digs at 819 Queen West up to Dupont.
In the process, owners Sara Parisotto and Hamid Samad doubled their floor space, from 1,000 to 2,000 square feet, and given the new space at 367 Dupont, formerly a kitchen design store, and before that a Porsche repair shop, a $60,000 makeover.
"It has to do with the people you keep company with," says Samad of the reasons behind the move. "We're next door to
Floorworks, and a lot of their clients would have similar tastes to our clients. We started out on Queen Street and our clients have grown. A lot of our clients now head design firms or architecture firms, and their budget has gone up a bit, so you want to be close to shops like
South Hill Homes, and you're not far from the
Designers Walk, Avenue and Davenport is very close."
Most of the extra space comes in the form of width, which has extra benefits for the showroom aspect of the business.
"We tried putting a couple of the items we had in the old shop," Samad says of their preparations for last weekend's soft opening. "They actually look better because there's more perspective; you can stand back and look at the items."
Writer: Bert Archer
Source: Hamid Samad
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