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Community Corner

Baltimore's Trohv Opens Shop in Takoma Park

The store is bringing new furnishing for residents.

It is a veritable treasure trove, filled with long, plush couches, vintage wood tables, dinosaur knick-knacks, large cabinets you might find in Narnia and a sweet-accented woman at the desk, greeting the wonderer into her lair of all things dreamt of.

Trohv, two-weeks new to the D.C. side of Takoma Park, fills a niche in the already arts-filled neighborhood; for the creative-minded resident, it's a place to not only buy a bed for your home, but to buy baby gifts, clothing, jewelery and maybe even get a history lesson.

The building, originally a 1930s-era grocery store, now shows off it's original flooring that still has the marks of the aisles and high ceilings that hold up light fixtures specially made by an Ohio artist.

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Carmen Brock grew up in a family-business, so the switch from being a Baltimore City middle school teacher to family-run store owner, seemed simple.

“We love art and community involvement and we were trying to figure out how to blend that into our careers,” Brock said, who also co-owns the original Trohv in Baltimore. “The first few years in Baltimore were nervous ones, but we've gotten into the hang of it.”

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Brock met her now husband and business partner Ben Homola while at Georgetown College in Kentucky. They married three years after graduation and after one law and masters degree, they decided to venture into retail. In 2006, they opened their first store, originally named Red Tree and in the past two years, started looking at other locations to expand to another store. In January 2010, they saw the space that is now Trohv and by the end of the summer of 2010, had signed the lease papers.

“We like the neighborhood model of Takoma Park; we looked at a lot of places, but they didn't have the same feel as the community here,” Brock said. “They care about what is here and we care about what is around us.”

They had hoped to open before Christmas 2010, however, they ran into numerous structural challenges, a large one being asbestos tiles in the flooring, which pushed the opening back to late April. In two back rooms at Trohv hold reminders of the way they first found the place: peeling paint, outdated cabinets and fixtures and in the bathroom, a deeply stained toilet that Brock says is her next project.

“We've done a lot of the work ourselves, from Ben building the cash wrap and wood columns to refinishing the [customer] restroom,” Brock said. On this particular day, Homola was on a buying trip and would return with 150 new items for the store. Brock was leaving the next day for a buying trip to NYC. They go on these trips eight to ten times a year, usually together, though with the new store opening, one of them have stayed behind to mind the new store. “Ben was at a huge field sale today at 5 a.m. when the buyers from Ralph Lauren and Banana Republic showed up, wearing denim and scarves. Sometimes it's a scramble to get the best stuff, but we like to buy our stuff from the more little-known places.” Though Brock has one line of manufactured items from Indonesia, she says the rest is supplied by local artists, craft fairs and are one-of-a-kind. “We feel like collectors of artful objects,” which is why they settled on the name Trohv, the phonetic spelling for “trove” after splitting ties with Red Tree, another retail store in Kentucky that they derived their original name from.

Brock said she hopes to draw Takoma Park residents in with not only their items, but their afford ability, “We feel like their might be other stores that do what we do, but they aren't nearly as affordable. We want to be in the middle road to be accessible.”

 

Want to go?

Trohv is at 232 Carroll Ave. NW. For more information, call 202-829-2941 or visit www.trohvshop.com.

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