Canning’s Retro Hippo Stay and Play Boutique a ‘warm, fuzzy feeling store’
Motherdaughter duo own, operate quirky antique shop
A shopper browsing the wallto-wall and floor-to-ceiling eclectic assortment of antiques and quirky retro collectibles in
became a Canning shop recently enthralled by a book on auto mechanics.
“My uncle was a mechanic,” he said to shop owner Shelley Corkum.
"I remember sitting for hours looking through this exact book as a child learning and knowing what he was doing."
Finding something that stirs nostalgia in someone is something Shelley Corkum is quite familiar with.
"We are not a junk store,
Corkum that's for sure," Shelley said of the Retro Hippo Stay and Play Boutique, which she owns and operates with her daughter Hannah Corkum, who is also her business partner.
“We are a memory store. A warm, fuzzy feeling store,” Shelley Corkum said.
Shelley Corkum said customers share fond childhood memories brought to mind by objects nestled on shelves or hanging on walls of the oneroom boutique located in the basement of her home.
“We had a lady call us the other day. She had seen a picture online. And she said ‘I'm pretty sure my father made these pictures you have hanging in your shop,'” Corkum said.
“My aunt had this little creamer,” one customer shared. “This is exactly the same creamer she had on her dining room table.”
Corkum said they like to hear “these different stories.”
The boutique was registered as a business and opened in March 2020, the day before the first COVID lockdown.
Shelley Corkum said opening the boutique was a way
to start a business to provide Hannah, who has a disability and is in a wheelchair, with employment after she graduated from high school.
“Because she has cerebral palsy, we knew there wasn't going to be a college, or a university, involved after high school. We knew this is what we were going to do for her, start this business so she has some employment and is out in the public letting people know that people with disabilities can have a normal job,” Shelley Corkum said.
The pair began collecting the unusual and quirky items that fill the boutique from yard sales and flea markets. An uncle who has an antique shop provided some things and donations came from other sources.
“We are pretty picky. And Hannah and I have had a few arguments about what goes in the store, haven't we?” Shelley Corkum said during an interview.
“Um hmm,” was her daughter's emphatic reply.
“Most of our stuff is from the 1900s and I like certain eras from the forties to the seventies. And Hannah is more eighties and nineties because that is stuff she remembers,” Shelley Corkum said.
The pair agreed they feel emotional energy from certain items they choose to offer in the boutique.
Hannah Corkum chose the name based on a game she enjoyed playing as a child.
“That was my idea because I
wanted Hungry Hippos. But it was taken already,” she said.
The stay-and-play part of the business name came from her idea to have some customers stay to play rented board games and to enjoy the huge collection of Lego on hand while others shopped.
“It's really good for their brains for them to play,” Hannah Corkum said.
“I had an antique and collectible shop years ago. She wanted to do that with a twist,” Shelley Corkum said.
“But because of COVID we couldn't do that yet,” she said.
SHOP NEVER DISAPPOINTS: CUSTOMER
Shoppers book an appointment, usually about 40 minutes depending on the number of visitors, by phone, Instagram, Facebook or email. Three people are allowed entry at a time.
The boutique is open for business Wednesday to Friday from 11 a.m. until 5 p.m. and Saturdays from 11:30 a.m. until 5 p.m.
LeeAnne Singer, of Hammonds Plains, is an Instagram follower and customer of Retro Hippo.
“I love mid-century items and find myself reminiscing about items from my childhood or perhaps something that my grandparents had in their homes,” Singer said. “If only I had had the foresight to know that the decor of the ‘60s and ‘70s would be the style that I would be drawn to in later years.”
Chelsea Ferriss, of Halifax, discovered Retro Hippo on Instagram almost a year ago.
“Shelley and Hannah have curated unique antique and vintage items. I am such a picky and careful shopper; I can go to the boutique looking for one thing but easily walk out with quilts, feedsack, glassware and more. The shop consistently offers me a variety of treasures," Ferriss said.
“Retro Hippo has never disappointed me, and I love supporting a family-owned business.”
Shelley Corkum said she and her business partner are trying to find accessible space
Canning, Wolfville, Kentville in or New Minas to rent so they can move the business.
“Where Hannah is in a wheelchair, it's a little more difficult to find a space because a lot of places have stairs,” she said.
In the future, Hannah Corkum is looking forward to having enough space for more visitors to shop, play board games or play with Lego, and even purchase a plant and pot the plant in the store. They said they may even expand to include a café down the road.