Northwest Handmade celebrating new showroom

SANDPOINT — It has been 15 years since Dan and Pam Mimmack began their journey with Northwest Handmade.

Friday, the couple celebrates their newly remodeled downtown showroom with an open house from 5-8 p.m. In addition to food and beverages, A Touch of Jazz will play and there will be free giveaways during the event.

The community is invited to visit the store and see the changes and explore the new showroom.

The Mimmacks started Northwest Handmade with 300 square feet and part of a window facing the sidewalk, and the storeroom was shared three other business.

“Back then, the rustic furniture market was very small with a reputation for shoddy workman ship,” Dan Mimmack said. “We set out to change that perception by providing something unheard of in the furniture business — an unconditional lifetime guarantee.”

When they heard the promise, people would often ask if it applied to a piece even if it was later sold or was given to someone else.

“The answer is always yes,” Mimmack said.

It is this policy of standing completely behind everything built at Northwest Handmade that serves as the bedrock on which the store is built, he said.

Over the years, that policy — and the high quality of the store’s furniture — has won plenty of fans. The showroom has now grown to more than 4,000 square feet of custom, handmade furniture.

It still, however, is the same family-owned and operated store dedicated to its customers and crafting of a high-quality product that it was when Northwest Handmade was opened 15 years ago, Mimmack said.

“We currently have over 100 artists and craftsmen that we represent,” he said. “When you make a purchase here, your money goes to a local family who, in turn, spends it in our community. This income is a vital part of why buying locally is so important.”

The store also was recently recognized by the Greater Sandpoint Chamber of Commerce as its business of the month.

Northwest Handmade has its start in the winter of 1993, just after the family moved to North Idaho from Kona, Hawaii, and they were talking about what they loved about their new home.

Pam asked her husband to make her some log furniture. Up for the challenge, Dan told his wife he just needed a few tools and some time to teach himself how to make it.

“She had no idea that she planted the seed that has become the store you see downtown today,” Mimmack said at a recent chamber meeting. “Like a lot of newcomers, we arrived basically broke but believed our future was bright.”

Throughout the years, Mimmack said he was told that log furniture was just a fad and encouraged not to quit his job.

“They  had no idea that at the time we had nothing and we were completely fearless,” he told the chamber.

When Pam took over running the store, Northwest Handmade blossomed, Dan said.

“She set the tone for everything we do,” he added. “Her philosophy was to treat everyone with love and understanding and, whether they buy anything or not, they will remember that Northwest Handmade treated them like family.”