HAPA Design Store: Loving The Local

To step into HAPA design store is to enter an Aladdin’s cave of beautiful, covetable things. You know, if the cave were actually a converted shipping container and if instead of saying “open sesame” you just hand over your credit card.

If there’s a problem with the place, it’s that you find yourself wanting to buy EVERYTHING. Leaving with just one brown paper package tied up with string seems somehow unfair to all the other lovely things you’ll be leaving behind.

And what about that name? Maureen Taane, who co-owns HAPA with business partner Yuri Bacas Hosaka, is used to people asking about the meaning behind the name of her Christchurch design store but is happy to explain it to anyone who is curious.

“It’s a word of Hawaiian origin. It means half… It describes something that is made up of two different things. In Hawaiian it’s used to talk about a person of mixed racial heritage… It made sense in a lot of ways for us because Yuri is half Spanish, half Japanese and I am of Māori-French origin and it’s a little bit like Christchurch. A bit old, a little bit new. A bit broken…”

A little beautiful?

Well, that’s the idea. HAPA’s design aesthetic is nothing if not varied and eclectic. Wall art prints featuring Daleks sit not far from geometric wooden pendants. Bowties for children share shelf space with coffee mugs emblazoned with words like “munted” and “rockstar mum”. A bean bag shaped like a hibernating bear sits in one corner. Colour is everywhere.

It’s no accident that HAPA’s motto is “love the extraordinary” but it could equally be “love the local”. 80-85% of the product range is made locally. Both women co-owners have a great eye and all the products they offer have a “cool but without trying too hard” feel to them.

Says Taane, “we bring in a few things from outside of New Zealand but they still need to fit our aesthetic of unique or handmade or somehow extraordinary… We want people to walk into the shop and go ‘I haven’t seen that before’ or ‘Look at this. This is amazing. This is unusual’.”

We stock products where you can see the handprint of humanity on them. They’ve obviously been made by a person, not a machine.

This uniqueness comes down to the suppliers they work with. “Some of our suppliers make one thing and that one thing, they’ve made three of them. We’ve got crafty nanas making things for us. We’ve got design students. Ex-design students. We’ve got lawyers and accountants who aren’t being fulfilled by their job creatively so at night they watch Shortland Street and they knit.”

Hapa also facilitates bespoke products for customers. If there’s something a punter likes but it’s not exactly what they’re after the staff will go the extra mile, contact the supplier and get a one-of-a-kind gift or special piece made on their behalf.

“We try to never say no. That’s the beauty of dealing with small suppliers and small crafters. They can [make adjustments] because they’re not diecasting. They’re not using a template…. And that’s the great thing about working with smaller suppliers – not only are they willing to do it, they’re happy to do it. They love the challenge.”

 Visit HAPA at Container N7, Re:Start Mall, 96 Oxford Terrace, Christchurch in person or shop online.