New furniture shop nods to Columbia Falls' past

A new furniture and home decor shop named Monaco has recently opened on Nucleus Avenue, becoming one of Columbia Falls' latest additions to the town's growing business community.

The new shop is the creation of two women entrepreneurs, Jennifer Poniatowski of Columbia Falls and Karla Piscopo of Whitefish, who aim to provide customers with a unique shopping experience.

The store offers an assortment of quirky home furnishings and accessories that reaches beyond the picket-white, simple-elegance themes commonly offered in home decor, to instead bring customers options that range from funky to classic to vintage to modern.

And nearly everything in the store has been reclaimed exclusively from around the Flathead Valley.

"We haven't purchased anything from online companies of any sorts," Piscopo said. "Our biggest goal is to not have to do that, just keep everything local."

"And almost everything was gotten from a different [venue]," she added. "So none of it goes together, but it does, right. There's seriously something for everyone."

Most notably, the store's eclectic offerings have allowed it to fill the unique niche of becoming a home decor shop that reaches a male demographic.

"Men love shopping in here," Piscopo said. "And that was one of our things when we were putting this together, was to create a place where men want to go to buy their own stuff. Because men have taste, they have really good taste. But where can they go? We've had a lot of younger guys in here buying stuff for their places."

On top of that, the unconventional boutique has kept its prices relatively low.

"The biggest compliment we've been getting from people is like, 'Wow, you guys are really reasonably priced,'" Piscopo said.

The model has seemed to work well, as merchandise has been streaming out of the less than two-month-old business. The new owners have had to add to, and rearrange, their store's layout nearly daily to accommodate the rate of sales — a welcome, albeit hectic, pace for the two business partners who so far have done everything themselves.

The shop is a novel venture for both Poniatowski and Piscopo, who met several years ago working in a Whitefish consignment shop. While neither has a formal background in interior design, both have always had a knack for it, often being asked by friends for their creative perspective.

Both had been dreaming of opening their own shop for sometime when the retail space on Nucleus became available in January.

"We kept saying, 'We need a store,' and randomly one morning I looked online and there it was," Poniatowski recalled.

"This beautiful space just happened upon us and we didn't want to pass up the opportunity to go for it," Piscopo added.

"And everything just kind of fell into place ever since then," Poniatowski said.

The two ended up whipping together the shop in a whirlwind two and a half months, artfully filling up the space with their local findings until they eventually felt ready to open on April 2.

The last adornment to be added was a sign of the shop's name which hangs above the door, displaying "Monaco" in all capital letters.

"The hardest thing was coming up with the name," laughed Piscopo. "We filled the store faster than we could come up with a name."

The company's short and elegant moniker is actually an homage to the town's early history. In the days before the railroad, the small community of pioneering settlers that occupied the area from Halfmoon Road to the Flathead River was originally known as Monaco, decades before the town was officially incorporated as Columbia Falls in 1909.

Monaco's tribute to the past is additionally fitting since the shop opened in one of Columbia Falls' oldest buildings. It, along with the building just north of it currently housing Lary's Fly and Supply, was originally part of the Bank of Columbia Falls, built by one of the town's founders, James Talbott, at the turn of the century.

Monaco is currently open from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday but will be open seven days a week starting in June.