When Elizabeth Hall left her beloved but frosty Maine home 18 years ago, it was with a fine arts degree and a lifelong dream to live on an island. As it turns out, she also carried considerable business aplomb.
Today she’s the owner of Island Empire, importing and selling furniture at two locations on St. Thomas.
Sitting last week in her office above a showroom crammed chock-a-block with beds, bureaus, buffets, cabinets, couches, chairs, dressers, divans, dining sets, and all manner of household furniture, Hall described her long and winding career in the import business.
Her first job on-island had nothing to do with imports.
“I was the beverage cart girl at the golf course,” she said, adding that she enjoyed the work at Mahogany Run, but it’s the last time she worked for someone other than herself. The experience was valuable because she met a lot of people, both visitors and residents, and some later became customers.
It wasn’t long before she joined forces with a man who had friends who traveled regularly and extensively, especially in Indonesia. With their help, he was bringing in “trinkets” from abroad and selling them at Vendor’s Plaza. Hall said she added a line of tropical clothing that she designed.
Originally, the pair stored their merchandise in an apartment, but soon “We started to grow.” So they moved into a storage facility at Fortress Storage. When that got too small, they took another space, and another. Pretty soon they began to import furniture to wholesale it to island hotels and other businesses.
Hall bought out her first partner, added a second, and eventually bought her out too. Meanwhile, the business moved out of the Fortress storage facility section across the street into one of its larger warehouse spaces. Hall dropped the clothing and handicrafts and concentrated on furniture, expanding into retail sales as well as wholesale.
Her Fortress location is anything but high-traffic. But, she notes, “I’ve been back here for 17 years, and people find me, so I must be doing something right.”
So right that, in September, she opened a second outlet, East End Galleria, in Red Hook. There she can showcase her products and more conveniently serve clients from St. John, the British Virgin Islands, and the East End of St. Thomas.
Hall said she is an authorized dealer for a number of top brands, including TempurPedic, La-Z-Boy, Bassetts, Telescope and Lexington.
“We do hospital-grade furniture,” she said. “Some people have had sticker-shock, but they don’t understand the (high) cost of shipping.”
Hall said she prides herself on the high quality of her products, and does what she can to make it affordable.
“Everybody deserves a piece of good furniture – a whole house full,” she said. “I work with my customer. I will do lay-aways. I make it work.”
Helping her are just two employees, one to staff each of the two outlets, with Hall traveling between the them.
As if the workload weren’t enough, Hall is also a single mom, very engaged in raising her seven-year-old son, Sylas Michael Mills, whose photos decorate her office. It’s a challenge, she said, “but I wouldn’t have it any other way … He’s such a joy, oh my word!”
One of these days, Hall said she will get her own dream home. But for now, she’s content decorating other people’s.
