Happy Home

Happy Home is a French Home Goods shop in Nancy, founded by Audrey and Alexis Oudin. In 2009 Audrey fell in love with a masking tape brand she discovered on a Japanese blog, learning that no one in France sold their products, she started importing the tapes, launching an online shop to sell them. The original online shop selling only masking tape has expanded into a bricks & mortar shop with an interesting assortment of products that add “happiness for daily life”.

The Shop

Who designed the shop? My husband, Alexis, and I.

What are your best selling products? Stationery from Korea, PF Candles, and Moroccan baskets.

Where are your product sourced? Paper goods are from Korea and French artist Caroline Briel; baskets and glasses from Morocco; metal baskets and linen goods from Japan; PF candles from Los Angeles, and the remaining brands from Scandinavia.

What makes your shop unique? We have an interesting mix of well-priced products. We only offer items that we would use or have in our home, that one cannot find in department or chain stores, and change the assortment often so there is always new things to find.

Who are your customers? Mainly French and European women between 25 and 45 years, and also a number of loyal Japanese clients.

The Shopkeepers

Who inspires you: Beautiful Instagram and Pinterest accounts, Home and Interiors books and Magazines, brands we discover on our travels, a new restaurant interior, the colours on a country walk, our surroundings and environment.

What inspires you: Mainly our natural environment; nature, plants, trees, and flowers.

Before I was a shopkeeper…..I was a veterinary assistant, nothing to do with home and interiors.

The hardest lesson learned in starting a business? Patience.

What task do you like to delegate? I do practically everything. Sometimes I delegate the photography for the online shop, it requires a particular skill and it’s good to have someone with a different point of view.

The best lesson you have learned opening a shop? That it takes a lot of time, patience, that it is necessary to adapt and reinvent.

Your advice for anyone wanting to open a shop? Don’t get discouraged, believe in your project, and give it the time to become established.

If you weren’t a shopkeeper….. My dream is to be a florist. I love flowers, I can’t live without them. I would love to have them in the shop, but they are very constraining and perishable, a completely different business.

What is your perfect day off? To have nothing planned. Cook with my family; a walk in the country, gathering flowers, twigs, and a variety natural treasures; take some photos, leaf through an interiors book; browse in a flea market.

Five favorite shops: Neëst, an online shop based in Paris; Landmade, based out of a showroom outside Lille; Nämä, Finland; Tas-Ka, Netherlands; Des Petits Hauts, France.

I wish I could… Live in the country surrounded by plants and flowers, have my shop beside my house, grow fruits, vegetables, flowers and plants, that I could sell and use in a café, simple but healthy.