Asian home goods and snack shop opens in Des Moines
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Torri Myers and Nam Ho, co-owners of Hotori. Photo: Studio Preservation
A new Asian home goods and snacks shop opened next door to Horizon Line Coffee.
Driving the news: Nam Ho, co-owner of Horizon Line, and his partner, Torri Myers, launched Hotori last weekend.
- The shop's name was inspired by a combination of Nam's last name and Myers' first name.
How it started: Ho and his business partner, Brad Penna, opened Horizon Line Coffee in 2017 after moving to Des Moines from California.
- After spending several years in the Midwest and building a community of his own, Ho, who is Vietnamese, wanted to open something that felt more connected to his culture.
- Meanwhile Myers, who is from Des Moines and is half Korean, also wanted her own shop after working at several small curated stores, including Preservation and Eden.
- "We've been together for five, going on six years," Ho says. "So finding something that we both can connect over and grow ourselves was something that I thought was pretty important."
State of play: Hotori's mix of products includes cookbooks, ceramics and hard-to-find snacks.
- Many of the curated products were inspired by their travels to California, where modern Asian home goods stores are more common.
- Items include minimalist Japanese ceramics, a jam sourced from Jeju Island in South Korea and incense from a Korean American tattoo artist.
What they're saying: A lot of their products are items they've enjoyed themselves. Myers has kept a wrapper from chocolate sourced in Singapore for two years — just for this moment.
- "I always knew the store was going to be about identity," Myers says. "Our filter is the majority of things are Asian, Asian American."
If you go: 10am-6pm Tuesday-Saturday; 10am-3pm Sunday; 1417 Walnut St., Suite D, Des Moines.
