In Business of Home’s series Shop Talk, we chat with owners of home furnishings stores across the country to hear about their hard-won lessons and challenges, big and small. This week, we spoke with Gregory Blake Sams of the Charleston, South Carolina, store Wentworth.
There were moments in our conversation where Sams seemed almost embarrassed by the success of Wentworth, which opened just one year ago. In that time, the business has already expanded its physical footprint, and brought in much more than the $5 per day in sales he dared to hope for last summer. The original plan for the shop was a retail extension of Gregory Blake Sams Events, his full-service event-design business, where clients could pick up the tableware and accessories that make his parties pop. “It all speaks the same language. It’s all home base, it’s all entertaining, and it’s all hospitality,” he says. Ahead, he chats about the store’s chocolatey color scheme, e-commerce efforts, gold-star staff, and more.
How did your career lead to the shop?
I went to the College of Charleston, and while I was in school, I worked for a corporate event planner. I then went to work for Orient Express Hotels, which at the time owned a local hotel in Charleston. I worked in events and with the floral team, then left to work for Spoleto Festival USA. It was a nonprofit job, so I took side jobs: a little bit of interiors, a little bit of private-event planning. Over time, I was doing so many events for clients outside of my main job that it was time to flip the switch and create a company. Many years of the event company led to the store—giving clients a repository where they can buy things that we typically use for their events.
What interested you about retail specifically?
When I first started the business, I had so many local clients—Charleston’s [known for] entertaining—so I used to be consistently busy with smaller cocktail parties. Our projects are larger at this point, so I had this client base that we were no longer serving. But what if I gave them a place where they could buy all the essentials that I would typically recommend, but they can buy on their own time? The original logic was to be a one-stop shop for my Charleston clients to knock everything out: great glassware, tapered candles for a dinner party, proper cocktail napkins, a beautiful vase.
How much did you know about retail? What was the crash course like?
I grew up in Greenville, South Carolina, and my aunt had a really beautiful store called Vignettes that was chic for its time. I had a little bit of that retail experience. When I was in college, my boss’s partner had a stationery shop in Charleston on Broad Street, so the entire time I was working for this event planner, I was always merchandising and helping on the retail side of his partner’s business. I also knew that there was a need in Charleston, because that store closed down.
So my retail background was very limited, but that was why I brought on Liz Macpherson, our managing director on Wentworth. She’s absolutely incredible. She had a stationery store for many years called Mac & Murphy, but was ready to move on, and the stars aligned. Liz is one of my oldest friends in Charleston. She brought on the retail business acumen, and she manages the day-to-day. I get to have the fun and pick and choose [products].
What’s the location like, and the aesthetic of the store?
I wanted to be a destination. I didn’t want to be on King Street [Charleston’s main tourist shopping strip], or adjacent to King Street, because I think that’s a certain demographic and customer base that isn’t quite what we want. I wanted to be a bit removed—though I was like, “Am I shooting myself in the foot by doing this?” I wanted customers to come with intent; I didn’t just want it to be people meandering. I didn’t want it cluttered with customers.
It feels very residential. There’s a kitchen in the back, bookcasing throughout, oak cabinetry. We worked with Urban Electric Company to do really beautiful lighting that feels older, almost Josef Hoffmann–inspired. It’s a bold palette when you look at it on a vision board, but then you walk in, and I don’t think it necessarily feels like you’re in this intense color box. For so long, we’ve seen these simple interiors with soft neutrals, and it feels exciting to bring back layered decoration.
Yes, I was struck by the moodiness. I think of the Charleston look as sunny, leafy, cheerful. How have people responded to it?
When I first opened the store, I was like, “Well, if we can just do $5 a day, it’ll be a little beautiful store. It can be PR and marketing for the event side. It’ll be fun to have.” But the store is wildly successful, and it is growing. Right now, our biggest pains are growing pains. Our Charleston customer base has been phenomenal. I think people are excited about seeing something that’s not whitewashed or plain or neutral. Several people have said, “It feels like an adult candy shop.”
How have you handled staffing?
Liz started early on in the project, when it was just an idea. Then, I was out at a seafood restaurant one night with an event client, and there was this maître d’, Neal, who handled my guests so beautifully, with grace. I was like, “This guy has got it.” I basically poached him. He had nothing to do with retail, but I loved the way he conducted himself. People come to the store and love to spend time with Neal.
We’re a small team—five people—so we were able to handpick who we wanted. Each time we’ve brought someone on, it is really important that they have the right vibe. I sound crazy, but our chemistry is so good, and on a small team it’s important that everyone jibes. After Neal we found Perri, who does our e-commerce, photography and social. She worked for a media outlet and was ready for a change. It’s really an incredible team.
What’s your sourcing process like, especially as someone new to retail?
I am an addict. I love to shop, so sourcing is typically in-person for me. I travel nonstop throughout the year with my event clients, going to some pretty amazing places and destinations and seeing really exciting things. If I’m not sourcing something in person, I’m probably lying in bed, scrolling the web at all hours of the night. I love the find, I love the hunt, I love the chase. It is a problem. I’ll see something, and then I send it to Liz, and then the team figures out where it’s coming from and who’s making it. Liz is constantly doing the same thing. Between the two of us, it’s a little wild. The amount of text messages that we’re constantly sending …
So would you say in-person markets, and then is it Instagram?
Yeah, a lot of stuff is online, just seeing where interesting things are coming from. We go to Paris once or twice a year and find stuff there. The stuff we’re loving the most is not really these brands that have huge representation; they’re smaller, one-off brands. It’s coming from all over the place: a little online, a little travel, a little bit of someone saying, “Oh, you really should know about this person—they’re making such and such.” Word-of-mouth and hidden discovery.
What’s a vendor that you love?
There are quite a few. We’re working on launching a series of five or six beautiful lamps with ceramic artist Zachary Dillingham Zimmerman. In the beginning, we wanted the store to be full of exciting products. Now, the folks who presented these exciting products are working with us to develop new ones that are exclusive to Wentworth. We have five or six of these situations going on with artisans, and it’s so fun. It’s like, “I’m obsessed with this. How can we make it more interesting? What can we do together?”
What’s a product that flies out the door?
The team’s going to kill me when this goes out, because people will shop more for ’em. But we have these beautiful hampers in three or four different sizes and great laundry baskets with handles. There’s nothing life-changing about them, but they’re classic. When they come, it’s a huge shipment, and comical because the team’s just overwhelmed by the mountain of baskets coming off. And our tapered candles. Behind the register are these beautiful, extremely tall candles still hanging on the dipping frames from Denmark. It’s like cigarettes behind the counter at a bodega: Every transaction we have, people are buying a pair of these candles.
You mentioned that e-commerce has been a smash. What’s your approach?
The e-comm journey is quite a winding path. I had no clue how much work goes into an e-commerce site. That’s been the most eye-opening experience of opening a store. Brick-and-mortar is quite easy by comparison. The shipping, measurements, photography, the angles, how you pack it. I am so fortunate to have a phenomenal team. Perri oversees a lot of it. About 70 percent of our retail is represented on e-commerce; a lot of our found objects and antique items come and go out of the storefront so quickly that they never make it upstairs to the studio to be photographed. People are hungry. Sometimes we’ll [post] it a bit more casually, on an Instagram story, and folks will see it and quickly call the shop. We want to build this out more and more, but it just takes so much time and energy. As the store expanded, we moved into the office in the adjacent house, and took over the next floor of our building. So now, upstairs from the store is a photography studio, back stock, and packaging and shipping.
Tell me more about the expansion.
Originally, we renovated the building and half the store was our event-planning office. We designed it somewhat so that if the store took off, we’d push the office elsewhere and expand the store. It became evident after the first five months that the office needed to go. We did another small renovation, and now the office is close by. We also brought on a wonderful textile line called Studio Ford. That’s been one of the sneaky things we added to our inventory that’s been such a success.
So we’ve already doubled our square footage. That’s the maximum of our first floor, so it’s as big as we can get here. In other areas of growth, e-commerce is really taking off. As a new business owner in this realm, it is really interesting to see where things are going and who’s using what. … It’s so fun to come up in the mornings and see a huge stack of boxes going out. My geek self likes to track—maybe a customer bought one thing in the store on this date, and then three weeks later we see a nice online order come through from them. It tells me the experience in the store works. They’re getting the vibe, and then going home and pondering it on their own time.
Given your career, have you been throwing events for the store?
Funny that you ask—you would think a party planner would throw so many parties, but the store is so full, which is part of what makes it lovely. If we emptied out the store and had a party, it would not feel like the store. We’ve only been doing small cocktail parties and in-store shopping experiences. We did a book signing for Jeffrey Alan Marks, who’s absolutely incredible and so kind. It had a wonderful turnout.
What’s your favorite day as a shop owner?
Obviously, I love when sales are high, but I would say the very best is when I find something amazing for the store and I know that it’s going to a good home or to a decorator that I love, who will do something really beautiful with that object. It’s such a good feeling to be a little tiny piece of someone else’s project.
