The Hollyhock Emporium Celebrates 5 Years Of Business With Harrisville’s First Block Party
The Hollyhock Emporium has overcome obstacles such as rough weather conditions, COVID and more to stay open and celebrated their five year anniversary on April 6th.
“I feel like most people can have a summer business in this area, but it’s really hard for a small new business to last through those winters and we had COVID that made us have the longest first winter ever. Like it just turned into the lock down and all of that and without our local faithful customers, we never would have made it” said Jennifer Kozlow, owner of the Hollyhock Emporium.
To help give back to the community of Harrisville that helped keep them open through tough times. The Hollyhock Emporium hosted a block party on the block surrounding their store.
“We are celebrating five years. And with that, a lot of events in the area, it’s usually like a fundraiser or, you know, some sort of event, right? Where it costs money and we didn’t want that. We wanted an event where people could just come and have fun. So we went to the city and the city gave us permission to have a block party” said Monica Spears, owner of the Hollyhock Emporium.
This event is the first block party that has occurred in the city of Harrisville. This party allowed residents to participate in fun activities such as: karaoke, face painting and eating from food trucks.
“I want a place where people can create items and art can be sold in a safe place and there is no real clothing store in this area and how do you do that? Well, a lot of people have a lot of clothes that they don’t wear, so they can bring them here and cosign them. So they make money, we make money, it all goes back into the community” said Spears.
The Hollyhock Emporium is one of the few places residents of Harrisville can sell and purchase clothes.
“We really try to promote women in business, we really seek out as local as possible. Women owned, minority owned, anything that we can do to increase visibility and welcome to the world around us, everyone is welcome here” said Kozlow.
Spears and Kozlow hope to pave the way for people, specifically women that want to open a business and encourage them to do so. They said without the support of their families and the Harrisville community, they wouldn’t be here.
