Homewares the heart is
Community generosity helped a retail venture survive and thrive
The warm and cheery smiles of Sally Cleary and Jodi Paynter are the first things that greet you when you walk into the Bungalow and Basket, making you feel like you’ve just stepped into a friend’s kitchen.
That is exactly what these Toowoomba businesswoman want you to feel.
When the cousins decided to go into business together more than eight years ago, they wanted to combine Jodi’s experience in visual merchandising and homewares and Sally’s love of baking and accounting background. And so, the Bungalow and Basket was born.
They found their “sunny corner store”, on the Ruthven St end of the Bell Street Mall and set about turning their dream into the muchloved business that it is. In November last year they celebrated eight years of bringing beautiful homewares, delicious baking and coffee to the Toowoomba CBD.
“We really enjoy what we do and what we bring to our customers,” Jodi said.
“It comes from a pure place and when we opened we really didn’t know how well it would be received.
“But everyone loves what we do here; the two parts of our business really complement and bounce off each other.”
“We created a space that people felt comfortable,” Sally added.
“This is a space that is friendly and happy; our mood board really was to create a home away from home.
“That’s why we designed the space to look like a home kitchen; we wanted to give people a really relaxed feeling.”
That relaxed feeling has helped Sally and Jodi to build a very loyal customer base that feels more like family and friends. Those customers have then gone on to build relationships and friendships away from the shop.
Part of the pair’s ethos is to ensure that they have products on offer to cater to all budgets, so that shoppers never feel like they don’t belong.
“We didn’t want customers to have that feeling of ‘Oh my goodness it’s so expensive, I can’t afford this’,” Sally said.
While the ladies have built a beautiful community, the past three years have been a scary time.
When the Covid pandemic all but shut down the hospitality and retail sectors, Sally and Jodi quickly pivoted. They were helped by the community they had built up, which Sally said “showed up for us tenfold to make sure we were able to make it through”.
“We had to adapt with Covid; we were running coffees out to cars, we launched our website,” Jodi said.
“We developed our Bungalow Boxes, so if people needed to send gifts, they could buy them from here and we would deliver it in Toowoomba.
“Instead of people being able to come in and buy a slice of Sally’s baking, they could buy it by the loaf or buy a batch of cookie dough and bake it at home.
Through the ups and downs of the past eight years, Sally and Jodi have kept one thing in mind: “We wanted to do something that we loved – and we have done that.”