Amber and Hardy Haase’s successful line of botanical health and beauty products have become the foundation for the Shuswap couple’s latest endeavour: Wild Craft Mercantile.
Located in Salmon Arm at 180 Lakeshore Dr. NE, Wild Craft Mercantile is, as Amber explains, a natural progression of the Haase’s home-based Element Botanicals business.
“Our natural bodycare line is Element Botanicals, we’ve been doing it for 14 years,” said Amber. “That’s what started this whole thing. We needed more work space and we thought, ‘oh, maybe we should diversify with some retail as well and see how that goes.’ And than this shop was available.”
The store’s aesthetic combines the look of an old-world mercantile/apothecary shop – glass bottles and jars sit on shelves behind the store’s front counter, along with decorations reflecting the Haase’s love and fascination for the natural world.
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“We wanted to give our customers options to refill…,” said Amber, referring to the rows of refillable glass options. “We’ve been selling tons of product locally for so long and people were asking us over and over again,we’re in Salmon Arm, can we meet you somewhere and fill it up, rather than use another jar?
“And we work really closely with Askew’s Uptown, so we’re going to continue to do that and we’re going to set them up with a refill station as well.”
The store also includes a wide range of hand-made wares by Canadian makers.
“We have just an amazing collection of stuff from makers we personally know, that we’ve met throughout all the years of doing Element Botanicals. that we wanted to bring to this area because you can’t find them anywhere around here,” said Amber. “And most of the makers here are from Western Canada, but lesser known or just hadn’t hit Salmon Arm yet, so we wanted to bring that element to it as well.”
At the back of a store is a space where Amber will be conducting workshops for such things as perfumery, botanical dyeing, mineral makeup and more.
Wild Craft Mercantile is open 10:30 a.m. to around 5 p.m., Monday to Saturday.
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