Mavven Mercantile Sells Fair Trade Items During the Day While Offering Mindfulness Workshops at Night
By Zach Armstrong
After deciding to start a business together, Lisa Waters and Michelle Villemaire had to come up with a name. They chose Mavven Mercantile. The first word is a combination of two of their children’s names: Mabel and Vivian. The second is a nod to a lost pastime.
This pastime is what Waters describes as something people are in need of; when people felt more connected to their local community thanks to a common place to socialize, exchange goods and even find ways to express themselves creatively. Mavven Mercantile aims to be a revival of that concept for the Pacific Palisades.
By day (11 a.m. – 5 p.m.), the business is a retail shop where one finds various fair trade and handmade homeware goods such as ceramics, journals, cheese boards and work from local artists, among an array of other sustainable items. By night (or sometimes early in the morning), the furniture goes away, the blankets and mats come out, and the store has transformed into a studio for workshops in self expression, personal development, movement, breath and sound.
The workshops and items offered often come from well-known and/or widely-published trainers and artists. For example, Ora Nadrich, whose work has been featured in Reader’s Digest, NBC News, LA Yoga Magazine and Yahoo! Health, will host a mindfulness meditation session there on April 5. However, anyone can feel free to donate their artwork or host a workshop if they have some to offer. One day, local self-published author Carlo Allen stopped by to give Waters and Vaillemaire copies of his book All Bones Are White. And as simple as that, the book is now on display for sale just like anything else at Mavven.
“What we’re trying to attract in here are people who are good at things that they can teach others as a way to connect with themselves and each other through different modalities,” said Vaillemaire.
Waters and Vaillemaire have held an inseparable bond since the age of 13 when they met as Floridian teenagers. After visiting Michelle’s family in Massachusetts, Lisa would join her in attending Boston University and sat next to her during graduation. The duo have found themselves in each other’s accompaniment once more. This time as both Palisadian mothers, supporting one another in operating a novel and provocative business concept.
The new business is located at 15326 Antioch St., where the locally beloved Collection Antiques and Books owned by Jeff Ridgway once stood before ending operations in September of last year.
More information can be found at https://www.mavvenmercantile.com/.
