When I stepped into DE West, the new outpost for the creative sales agency Denvir Enterprises, it was a disaster zone. Less than a day before the soft opening, textile samples lay strewn on a table, posters scattered across the floor, and bare clothing racks awaited designer duds.
The agency—which represents design-driven and sustainable commercial-grade brands in furniture, accessories, finishes, and materials—was just hours away from opening the doors to the Melrose Avenue storefront it shares with Fooji, an experiential marketing start-up. However, founder Holland Denvir didn’t express any worry. After years of working in furniture design and building a sales agency, they know how to manifest a pop-up.
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- Denvir Enterprises founder Holland Denvir
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- DE West shares its space with Fooji, an experiential marketing start-up. A poster displays the brands that Denvir Enterprises represents.
Holland handed me a complimentary TV dinner of the chickenless chicken penne from Showtime’s The Curse—a leftover from Fooji’s most recent giveaway—as they explained how the new shop lets Denvir Enterprises take on an alter ego. The creative agency has a showroom, DE Downtown, tucked away on the eighth floor of a loft in LA’s fashion district. That space is all about getting down to business; it gets no foot traffic and it is appointment-only. But here in West Hollywood, just a few blocks from the Pacific Design Center, the friendly brick-and-mortar allows architects, interior design experts, furniture collectors, and passersby with immaculate taste to immediately experience all the whimsical products DE West has to offer.
Wool Textiless by Rohi
Mere hours after I met Holland, the store came together with wool textiles by Rohi hanging from thick ropes, perforated skateboard decks by Lander dangling from an equally punctured display, and geometric pillows by Denvir Enterprises’s in-house brand, Work in progress, ready to comfort the party guests.
“We’re so excited and grateful for this collaboration with Fooji. As a small business, it can be challenging to navigate the breadth of Los Angeles, and having the opportunity to have both a downtown and west-side location feels like a dream. It’s also a great opportunity for us to experiment with having a retail presence and host pop-ups with brands in a variety of categories, like Nancy Stella Soto (fashion) and Lander (skateboards),” Holland said in a statement.
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- DE West let guests write directly on a Sun at Six Yam sofa.
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- Plume Chair in natural leather by Sun at Six
At the DE West opening, guests wrote directly on a Sun at Six armchair—an unheard of indulgence for any showroom—and they could run their fingers across all the textile samples from various Denvir Enterprises brands like Ege, MINNA, and Nomadory. DE West repurposed test swatches into decor, finding a sustainable way to turn the scraps into yet another design element with the added benefit of helping customers see inside the design process and the time Denvir Enterprises puts into choosing their products.
DE West repurposed sample swatches into decor, letting visitors see inside their design and curatorial processes.
In addition to promoting sustainable small-businesses and design-focused brands, Denvir Enterprises, a queer-owned, NGLCC-certified business, is extremely conscious about choosing their collaborators. Over 50% of their clients are either minority-owned, female-owned, or LGBTQ owned.
To further their ethos, Holland’s personal brand, Work in progress, emphasizes this socially conscious message with their new line, Reproductive Rights Rugs, which is for sale at DE West. The colorful, hand-tufted depictions of the reproduction system raise money for the Abortion Access Front. Stars like actress Bridget Everett of HBO’s Somebody Somewhere proudly hang them on their walls.
With daring products, sustainable finishes, and minority-owned brands, DE West hopes to bring unexpected joy to their nook of West Hollywood.
