As the holiday season approaches and shelves are wiped clean of products, the 13th Annual We Heart Eagle Rock Shop Small Event will be taking place on Small Business Saturday Nov. 25. According to their website, this event is meant to support local businesses that are a part of the We Heart Eagle Rock collective founded by Leanna Lin Fong in 2010. Leanna Lin Fong also owns Leanna Lin’s Wonderland and said her store will have a pop-up in their parking lot, where they will feature four local artists. During the event, Lin said the store will continue to sell a variety of gifts one can buy for a loved one during the event.
“[The store has] fallen into the rabbit hole of a place where there’s handmade items, pop culture brands by local artists, West Coast artists, and we also have brands from Japan and the UK,” Fong said. “It is just a fun place where you can kind of come in and be happy and smile.”
Kids clothing and toy store on Colorado Boulevard, The Green Bean, is a part of the collective. According to owner Jess Castaneda, the business values sustainability in an age where fast fashion is predominant.
“It really is about upcycling and recycling your kids items,” Castaneda said.
For the event, Castenada said The Green Bean will bring in Minibop Music, a local kids’ music studio, who will have performances for children. According to Castaneda, this emphasizes the event’s spirit.
“It’s really all about showing people that we really care about Eagle Rock, and we care about our families, and we care about our customers, and we want to partner with them,” Castaneda said.
Folia Collective, a plant nursery founded by Denae Horst in 2016 is also participating in the event. According to Horst, Folia Collective business was initially in Pasadena, but she later moved to Eagle Rock. Horst said she opened up her business primarily because she never really found plant-related things that she liked. According to Horst, she wanted something to match her own aesthetic. Not only does she sell plants of different kinds, she said she also provides a lot of information on how to take care of them.
“I also realized that most of the people I knew who were constantly talking about how bad they were at keeping plants alive,” Horst said.
When it comes to shopping small, Horst said it has an important impact beyond benefiting the business.
“I just feel like it [local businesses] creates a community that’s more vibrant and appealing to live in,” Horst said.
Milkfarm owner Leah Park also owns Parchment Paper, another one of the businesses in We Heart Eagle Rock. According to Park, the shop sells culinary gifts and stationery.
“It is a store dedicated to all things food, without actually being food,” Park said.
According to Park, the event iterates the importance of shopping small.
“When you shop small businesses like ours, you’re not actually just helping the one business owner. It’s all the people that work who we supply jobs for, right? It’s all the people that we support by buying their stuff,” Park said.
Eagle Rock is a fruitful place to promote small businesses every day according to Park.
“I think that it’s a wonderful thing to showcase small businesses in Eagle Rock specifically. This is such a niche, small neighborhood within the big city of Los Angeles,” Park said.
Contact Francine Ghazarian at ghazarian@oxy.edu
