For the past four years, Ormstown has been the home of Une Touche de Bois, a custom furniture and interior decor store. At the end of last year, the decision was made to expand the business and open a second significantly larger store in Vaudreuil.
The goal is to provide complete services for any home improvement project. One of the owners of Une Touche de Bois, Mélanie Bouchard, explains that they “can really help the client [who has] a full renovation project, or even with the construction of furniture.” She also mentions that they exclusively use wood from the region, and don’t go further than Hemmingford to source material. There was some concern from clientele that the opening of the Vaudreuil store would mean that the Ormstown store would close, but rest assured, it isn’t going anywhere.
One new thing is that they are changing some of the ways that the furniture is made at the Vaudreuil store. “We created our own specific furniture line; it’s not as custom as it was in the past. We have models that are premade in Vaudreuil and will be in Ormstown too, and people can come choose their model and then adjust the size and colour to what they want,” Bouchard explains.
The new store is 4000 square feet (in comparison to 600 square feet in Ormstown). They made the decision to open the store in March 2022 and had originally planned on taking six months from the time they had access to the space to their grand opening. However, with the launch planned for early November, the plan ended up being fast-tracked. “We only had access to the space as of August first, so we only had three months to prepare it, renovate, make the furniture, make our purchases, etc.” The launch date ended up being moved from November 1 to November 4 due to a delivery issue.
Though many of the supply chain issues caused by COVID had subsided once Une Touche de Bois was ready to start this new era of its business, transportation was still proving to be a challenge. An order with most of the stock still hadn’t been delivered in time for the launch; “It was our employees who ended up picking up the order, going back and forth to Montreal to get everything, and did multiple trips all while people were starting to come for the opening,” explains Bouchard. It all worked out in the end, but they definitely experienced a stressful few months. “We were really proud and really satisfied, but it was pretty exhausting. A lot of energy was spent those last few weeks before the opening, but finally we were really happy with the results,” she adds.
Bouchard explains that “There’s not a lot of people who would leave Vaudreuil and come to Ormstown to shop for furniture and interior decorating,” so what they are most excited about now is “Growing our clientele – showing our talents to people who are more in the Vaudreuil region.” Bouchard adds that they hope to provide people in Vaudreuil and Ormstown with all of their decor services, and emphasizes, “We’re always here to help!”
