“I grew up on Long Island, and one of my favorite things to do as a kid was to head into town, take a stroll around, and shop,” says Jade Manzi, who recently opened Inland Objects in Ellenville’s increasingly walkable, shoppable downtown .
Since they started dating in 2021, Manzi and her partner, Eric Springer, had been looking for a way to collaborate professionally. “It really felt like there was such good energy on the strip of Canal Street, and something missing was a home goods and retail store,” says Manzi. “So we started talking about it and the idea stuck.”
The concept of a design- and shelter-focused storefront bridged their respective backgrounds in advertising and design/build, and in May, they opened Inland at 159 Canal Street in Ellenville.
Building an Economy
In 2017, Springer purchased undeveloped property in Napanoch with friends with the idea of a future shared living situation. He ended up spending the pandemic there, and during his many ambling drives, he happened upon Ellenville, immediately recognizing the once-booming village’s good architectural bones and investment potential.
With wood floors and high tin ceilings, the space at 152 Canal Street is a perfect example of Ellenville’s good architectural bones.
“Ellenville has a lot of really special buildings that have fallen into disarray. We saw them and said, ‘It would be fun to get in on these, fix them up, and find operators to liven the town up a little,’” he says. “So we started to do that. It is a by-the-seat-of-our-pants thing. We started with one property and it sort of snowballed into several.”
With his partners, Springer owns four buildings in Ellenville, including the Canal Street storefront that Inland Objects now occupies. Beyond his direct partners, Springer sees himself and Manzi as part of a larger, more informal cooperative of local residents, both new and lifelong, which coalesced through a COVID-era series of outdoor dinner parties, spurred on by Ellenville’s “fairy godmother,” Barbara Hoff of Top Shelf Jewelry.
Manzi and Springer through a dinner in the Carriage House behind 130 Canal Street to celebrate the grand opening of Inland, as a sort of pilot for what future event production and even rental aspects of their business could look like.
“We realized everyone had the same spirit but different visions, so we decided to each just do our own thing and help each other out,” Springer says. He points to the new owners of Slutsky Lumber mill shop, which has provided lumber for most of the construction projects throughout town. Or the marketing efforts of Victoria Messner’s creative agency, Reservoir Studio, which has almost single-handedly branded (or re-branded) many of the town’s businesses to create distinct but complementary visual identities.
“After Brooklyn, where you are just such a tiny thing in this very big pond, to come to a place where you are a medium-sized thing in a small pond and everyone is sort of helping—it’s remarkable,” Springer says. “It’s wild to watch an actual economy being built.”
Building a Brand
With Inland, Manzi and Springer have created a calling card for their skills and aesthetics. The storefront brings together vintage finds with artisanal objects sourced through global distributors and maker cooperatives. “There is a lot of influence from Latin America specifically but also some Turkish, Indian, and African pieces,” Manzi says of the inventory. The couple has also sourced a good number of the shop’s items themselves through their travels throughout Mexico, which they plan to continue doing.
Products range from decorative and functional ceramics to framed art, furniture, and soft goods like pillows and napkins. “In addition to more one-of-a-kind pieces, we also have the kind of stuff you see in a house everyday,” Manzi says. “We really wanted to make the shop reflective of all the things that make your home a home, from chairs to shelving units to playing cards, board games, puzzles, and greeting cards. It’s quite an eclectic mix of things.”
Through his company KSB Build, Springer custom-builds furniture and storage solutions for residential clients, from kitchen cabinets to wall units—an offering the couple would like to incorporate into Inland in the future. “We have prototypes of shelves and tables that Eric would be able to make for people,” Manzi says, describing the shop’s future double-duty role as a showroom. “For Eric, everything we’re doing is really complementary to his business. So we’re seeing how they can grow and mesh together.”
Other avenues of expansion include hosting curated events at the carriage house a couple doors down on Canal Street and also renting out objects from the Inland inventory for everything from photo shoots to weddings. “Now that Inland has launched, our mind is on new ideas for the future,” Manzi says. “Where can this take us? How do we continue to build and grow and evolve as Ellenville does? I think there is so much potential and so many wonderful things are happening. The future is really exciting.”
Inland Objects is open Saturdays and Sundays from 11:30am on.
