Domus reopens in downtown Los Gatos after 11-year absence
Hundreds turn out for ribbon-cutting at popular home goods store.
It was nearly impossible to chat with Domus owner Margaret Smith without customers pausing to thank her for reopening the long-missed store, which operated for decades in downtown Los Gatos before closing more than a decade ago.
Smith, who ran the popular home goods store from 1996 to 2012, says 150 people turned out for the Oct. 3 ribbon-cutting at the new Domus location at 54 N. Santa Cruz Ave.
The store’s return came about after Ed Stahl, the building’s landlord, asked Smith to take over the former Pharmaca space and turn it into Domus. Her immediate reaction was no. Thinking of the investment of money and time it would require, Smith told him, “I just don’t think I can do it.”
Then, late one night, she was walking down Santa Cruz Avenue. “I passed by the Pharmaca store all shuttered and thought, ‘What if a retailer goes in there that I don’t like? How would I feel?’ I’m at the point in my life where I don’t have 10 years to think about it.
“I realized this is what people crave: a local store where they can shop hands on. Some things you just don’t want to buy online.”
She called Stahl, then phoned two former store employees, Maria Sanguinetti and Liz Giervert-Kay, and they began plotting Domus’s return.
A recommendation led her to contractor Rafael Hernandez, who took Smith’s photos from the former Domus location and re-created the shelving and layout to suit the new store footprint. Going from 8,500 to 4,000 square feet meant scaling back, but there were certain items she had to carry, like Rosie Rings candles and Blenko Glass water bottles from WV. Blenko has been in business since 1893 and is among the last American glassblowers. Smith says their water pitchers have doubled in price since she last purchased them.
Smith worked her rolodex of suppliers and was able to quickly source over 33,000 different products from serving ware to stationery, mainly from women-owned businesses. She found that many longtime suppliers had gone out of business or no longer work with small stores like hers. What she has in stock is what her customers want: The 7,000 holiday ornaments Smith ordered are disappearing rapidly.
“I’m all out of pink clocks, thanks to the Barbie effect,” she says.
Smith and her crew of 13 elves, including former Los Gatos Chamber of Commerce staffer Randi Chen, are busily decorating the festive Christmas trees that create the quintessential Domus wonderland.
“On Christmas Eve,” says Smith, “It’s inevitable that at least one gentleman will come in and purchase an entire tree, ornaments and all. Their wife is sick or pregnant or in the hospital delivering their baby, and we just shrink-wrap the entire tree and off it goes.”