Larissa Hovis stands in the family business, surrounded by their merchandise. Courtesy | Larissa Hovis

Farmhouse Charm Shoppe in downtown Hillsdale is a local family’s venture to share their creativity with the community.

Brad and Larissa Hovis, and their oldest son, 17-year-old Hunter, recently started running the business out of their shop at 77 N. Broad Street. Their products include original designs and custom orders of handmade furniture and home decor.

“Our style is rustic, chic farmhouse,” Brad said. “You’re not going to go to any of the box stores and buy anything that we make, because our stuff is solid wood, it’s handmade, no two pieces are the same.”

Brad said that he, Larissa, and Hunter personally hand-make every piece they sell.

“Nobody else touches them,” Brad said. “I build it. My son and my wife fill, sand, stain, paint — whatever needs to be done after that.”

Larissa said the business that became Farmhouse Charm Shoppe originally started as a side hustle.

“He built me a farm table, and I had, of course, posted about it on social media, and all of a sudden, we started getting inquiries from friends and family,” she said.

Brad said they started the business from their home in 2019.

“She started posting pictures and things for her friends online, and it just kind of blew up from there,” Brad said. “So we were online for four years, and then we just opened the store downtown like six months ago, and now we’re starting to get into more decor and things like that.”

Larissa said this has allowed them to offer something within everybody’s budget.

“You could find a really cute $8 item, or you could go up and get a really nice piece of furniture,” Larissa said.

Larissa said she comes up with ideas in her head, not from looking up pictures online. Besides their own creations, they build custom furniture to meet customers’ specifications.

“We’ll build anything to your specifications and your measurements,” Brad said. “If you have this space in your house and you can only have a 4-foot-3 table, well, what are you going to do? You call somebody that makes you one, and there’s not very many people out there that do that. So we kind of homed in on that.”

Brad said that with just the three of them working and orders flooding in, they are usually booked out six to eight weeks.

“I draw a picture of it right there at the desk in front of you,” Brad said. “Six to eight weeks later, I bring it to you, and it’s exactly what you wanted. Your colors, your measurements.”

Brad said Larissa handles the financial parts of the business as well as advertising their products on social media.

Larissa said since they opened the store, she has become friends with quite a few of their customers, which she hadn’t expected at first.

“I’m kind of a shy person, so opening the store — I had some anxiety over that, because typically I was online behind the scenes,” Larissa said.

She said she didn’t see customers very often when their business was only online.

“Since opening the store now, I get to,” she said. “It’s really helped me come out of my comfort zone completely, which I absolutely love. I love seeing my customers.”

Larissa said the hardest thing for her is balancing the needs of her family with the demands of the business.

“I have eight kids, and one is still a little baby, so one second I’ll be feeding the baby, and then I’m holding her, then I’m painting something,” Larissa said. “My phone goes off constantly, so I’m having to respond to customers, and I am a very quick responder too. I kind of pride myself on my customer service.”

Larissa said she homeschools her oldest son Hunter.

“He loved that after the pandemic happened,” she said.

Hunter said homeschooling gives him the opportunity to help with the family business by sanding, filling, and staining finished products and sometimes running the shop. Brad said his son is his right-hand carpenter.

“It’s better than going to some other job where you barely know a coworker or your boss, for example,” Hunter said. “It just feels more at home.”

Hunter said he plans to stay with the business at least for a little while.

“If I were to get some other job, it would probably be somewhere in the woodworking business because I’m so familiar with it at this point,” he said.

Brad said he has enjoyed building things since he was a child and has worked in construction his whole life. He said he and Larissa have run several construction companies.

When they launched their business online, they had been looking for a job that would allow Brad to be home with his family.

“Our whole game plan was to live in the middle of nowhere, debt-free, and not have any neighbors,” Brad said.

He said they purchased their first farmhouse eight or 10 years ago.

“Because of the condition of the house, we were able to renovate it and make a large profit on it,” he said.

Brad said that after flipping a few houses, they were able to pay cash for their current home, an Amish farmhouse they used their construction skills to renovate. They also built all the furniture for the house.

“It was a new build, but it had no amenities because they were Amish,” Brad said.

He said he and his wife took some time off to do the renovations.

“It would generally take somebody, you know, six months or better,” Brad said. “We did it in two weeks because we have a family of 10 and we needed to move in two weeks after closing.”

Brad said the best part of running the business is being able to be home with his family.

“If the mood strikes me, I can stop what I’m doing and go help Larissa make lunch for all the little kids, or breakfast. If Larissa’s not feeling well, I can watch the kids for her,” Brad said. “So being here, a full-time dad, with Larissa, is probably the best part.”