Pacific Home, the young furniture and design store begun by Jenn Johnson and Aubrey Yee, takes on a third partner and moves to the heart of Kaka‘ako.Two years ago, Jenn Johnson and Aubrey Yee met up through the booming real estate industry in Hawai‘i. Both entrepreneurial women had their real estate licenses but were about to embark on new, individual careers utilizing their expertise in architecture and wholesale furniture importing, respectively.

Prior to moving to Hawai‘i, Johnson had worked at architectural firms Gensler in San Francisco and Murphy-Stevens in Denver. She saw an undeveloped niche in the Honolulu retail furniture market. Yee, originally from Honolulu, had seen the same gap and was already importing furniture from Indonesia, where she had lived after college. Ultimately, the two women wanted the same thing: to offer consumers stylish, high-quality furniture and home décor items that no one else carried in Hawai‘i.

“Aubrey had her own company importing furniture from Indonesia but no store, and I was thinking of starting an online home furnishing business,” explains Johnson. “But after doing more research I realized that Honolulu just really needed a retail store.”

After brainstorming together, Johnson and Yee decided to scrap their individual enterprises and launch Pacific Home as a new alliance. The women’s combined experience from their respective fields created a strong dynamic and by August 2004, Pacific Home had opened on Young Street, just behind the Beretania Street Safeway. “Working in architecture, Jenn had this vision of a lot of lines that would be great for Hawai‘i that we didn’t have here yet and I had this knowledge of how to bring things in from overseas,” says Yee.

Pacific Home enjoyed a remarkably successful start. And, less than two years later, in March of 2006, the company moved to a four-times-bigger, 6,600-square-foot storefront at 420 Ward Avenue. This more-prominent venue enjoys bustling through-traffic due to many nearby restaurants, shops, and high-rise apartment complexes.

Johnson and Yee recently brought on interior designer Jamie Jackson as Pacific Home’s third partner. “Everything was just one kind of look in Honolulu,” explains Jackson, who maintains residences on Kaua‘i and O‘ahu. “So when I first wandered into Pacific Home, I said, ‘Yes! Color! Something new, something fun!’ I began trying to buy as much as I could here for my clients and I did a couple of homes top to bottom.”

Aubrey Yee says that Jackson was pretty much their best customer from day one, so when they got the new Kaka‘ako space they simply invited her to join the team and head up a new division offering customers assistance with the art of designing their homes. With Jackson now on board, people who visit Pacific Home will discover a gratifying one-on-one approach and a one-of-a-kind shopping experience. “Your home is really important,” says Jackson. “So I really try to listen to how people live and then I try to help them realize their dream, or their nest.”

Pacific Home also hosts monthly in-store events that aim to give people innovative ideas about adding comfort and elegance to their homes. “We’re calling it Pacific Home’s StyleIn and they’re free, hands-on demonstrations or lectures with experts in the field of design and style,” says Johnson. “The StyleIns offer a relaxed evening with complimentary wine, soft drinks, and light pupu, while we all become experts in styling our Pacific Homes. We’ve had quite a few people show up, so it’s been gaining momentum.”

Visitors to the store will be pleased to find an extensive selection of Island-style wooden and rattan furniture, an assortment of bed linens and decorative pillows available in a wide array of cheerful pastels, various tabletop accessories, and beautiful floor and desk lamps. The look is bright, casual and comfortable, yet with an unmistakable contemporary feel. Some of the smaller items are under ten dollars, while some of the larger pieces of furniture, after customization, can range up to $5,000.

“Our products come from a wide variety of places, but our main upholstered furniture brand is Mitchell Gold + Bob Williams, and their products are completely made in the USA,” says Yee. “The rest of the products come from all over the place like Indonesia, India, China, and Thailand.” The North Carolina-based Mitchell Gold + Bob Williams company has chosen Pacific Home to be the exclusive carrier of its products in Hawai‘i.

Johnson, Yee, and Jackson, all agree that many Hawai‘i builders and designers could learn a lot by studying Indonesian properties, which they say do a better job executing an indoor-outdoor flow. To help this trend grow and flourish in the Islands with our ideal tropical climate, Pacific Home has begun carrying lines of furniture made by Dedon and Gervasoni, which can be incorporated equally well poolside, on a screened-in lanai, or within indoor living spaces.

Although Pacific Home has quickly developed into a store of impressive size, even acquiring its own warehouse behind the new store, Johnson says assisting customers and helping them feel at home is still their top priority. “We’ve moved to a bigger space, but the key has been maintaining our high level of customer service,” says Johnson. “We really stay in touch with all of our customers and make sure everything goes smoothly. We treat them like friends.”