‘Worldly treasures for the home’
Deb and Rick Kollmeyer collectively have experience as a flight attendant, wholesaler of Native American wares, interior designer and tech entrepreneur. Now the husband-and-wife team is diving headfirst into a new local business specializing in “worldly t
The Kollmeyers opened Adore on West Main Street, next to Drwb@24, on Oct. 6.
A blue palette dominates the interior, a theme Deb said was accidental but one that fits with the nautical sensibilities of other Main Street shops.
In April and May, the couple went on a trip to Europe to find items for their new store. They sent a container back with furniture, artwork and décor from Belgium, France and Holland.
Some finds in Adore include an early-1900s bench from Belgium, Murano glass apothecary jars from Italy and upholstered furniture from the North Carolina-based wholesaler Wesley Hall.
Adore stocks candles from Trudon ($56), a French company that dates to 1643. Each one in the store is covered with a glass dome, allowing shoppers to pick up the lid to smell the candle.
“When I lived in Paris, I loved to visit the Trudon store on the Left Bank,” Deb said in a Facebook post. “The candles and scents were amazing and even as a 20-something year old flight attendant, I would occasionally splurge and buy one.”
Rick lights up when he talks about the high-end knives, $180 creations of stainless steel and wood that he said take 100 steps to make.
Customers can buy a handmade guinea hen from France for $98 or a large copper water heater from Belgium for $120, or on the less pricey end, a Turkish hand-painted bowl for $21 or Rue Montmartre placemats for $6.50.
Adore also sells local arts and
crafts, such as beach paintings by Nelson White and jewelry by Jessica Noelle, who works out of the Velvet Mill in Stonington.
“The people are so nice. The artist community is amazing,” Deb said of Mystic. She and her husband, both 57, moved to Stonington at the beginning of 2016.
They bought the building at 26 W. Main St. a year ago as an investment property, with no intention of operating a business inside. But in her interior design work, Deb found that clients wanted things that were interesting and different. When the owner of Bejeweled decided to move out of 26 W. Main St., it presented an opportunity for Deb to find and sell unique items.
Deb started her career as a flight attendant, living in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia; Paris; New York City and Denver. She and Rick, who grew up in Groton, met on Block Island.
Deb spent eight years wholesaling Native American wares — her family is from New Mexico — and sold them to the Peabody museums at Harvard and Yale.
She then went back to school, graduating from Newbury College in 2000 with a bachelor’s degree in interior design. Deb started off focusing on kitchens and
baths, and then expanded to working with developers.
Rick was born in Alaska but grew up in Groton, graduated from the University of Connecticut and moved to Massachusetts for a tech job at Apple in the 1980s.
He then founded three tech businesses in the Bay State: The Support Group, Blue Edge Data Solutions, and most recently, Direxxis, a marketing automation company that grew to 80 employees and was acquired by Broadridge Financial Services in 2015.
This sale meant that there was no need for the Kollmeyers to stay in Boston anymore, Rick said. He feels the Mystic area is “ripe for economic development,” a pursuit he has made into something of a hobby.
Part of the appeal to him is to invest in an area he feels is on the rise instead of at its peak.