Ben and Erin Napier are celebrating a huge milestone this year — the 10th anniversary of Laurel Mercantile Co. in Laurel, Mississippi. See how the store, which the HGTV stars own with their “framily,” began as they look back on a decade in business.
Ben & Erin Napier Celebrate 10 Years of the Laurel Mercantile Store
On August 31, the Napiers and their Laurel Mercantile co-owners, Mallorie and Jim Rasberry and Josh and Emily Nowell, took to their blog to share some memories of their journey.
In the journal entry, they shared, “It is hard to believe that this December will mark ten years since the Laurel Mercantile Co. opened its doors!”
“Ten years feels like such a long time when you say it out loud, but when we started pulling up old photographs and rereading some of the things we wrote in those early days, it somehow feels like yesterday,” they continued. “We can still remember what that building looked like when we first walked through it, the feeling of having absolutely no idea what we were getting ourselves into, and the excitement of believing that maybe, just maybe, we could bring an old piece of Laurel’s history back to life.”
They shared, “The original Laurel Mercantile Co. had been a part of downtown Laurel beginning in 1901, long before any of us had ever imagined that we would one day be standing in its place. Erin had always loved the story of the original store, and in 2016, what had been a fondness for an old name slowly became an idea: what if we brought the Mercantile back?”
It all came together quickly from there as the friends discussed the idea and “that conversation became a business plan.” They noted, “And before we had much time to think about whether or not it was a good idea, we had found ourselves with a building and a deadline. We were going to open by Christmas.”
They admitted, “Looking back, there is something almost comical about how much we thought we could accomplish in six months. ‘Home Town’ was already filming, the ‘framily’ members were running other businesses and raising their families, and now we decided to renovate an old building and open a retail store at the same time.”
“There were a lot of late nights and a lot of learning as we went, but there was also something really wonderful about that season because all six of us believed in the same thing,” they noted. “We believed that Laurel was worth investing in, and that was enough to get us started.”
They marveled as people came to visit the store from out of state after seeing HGTV’s “Home Town.”
The framily shared “the heart of what we hoped the Mercantile could be.”
“We never wanted it to feel like a store that happened to be in Laurel; we wanted it to feel like a little expression of Laurel itself,” they explained. “We wanted the things on the shelves to tell stories about the people who made them, the places they came from and the values we believed were worth holding onto. We wanted someone who lived here to feel proud to bring a friend through the doors, and we wanted someone visiting for the first time to leave with a better understanding of why we love this place so much.”
American Made Products Are Sold at Laurel Mercantile
Their business evolved as they learned more about American manufacturing and featuring American made products in their store.
“It is a decision about who gets a job, which communities get to keep their trades, whether young people have opportunities to learn skilled work, and whether we are willing to invest in the kind of future we want to see in our own hometown,” they shared.
“That lesson has probably been one of the most important of the last ten years,” they noted.
As the December milestone approaches, they shared, “We won’t just be thinking about the products we’ve made or the businesses we’ve built or the milestones we’ve reached. We’ll be thinking about the people who made all of it possible.”
