Shopping is one of the best ways to spend time in Montclair, exploring the town’s abundance of stores and boutiques. Acorn General Store, located at 41 Church Street, is one of the newest additions to Montclair’s shopping scene, selling vintage, sustainably sourced, and eco-friendly brands and private label merchandise across multiple categories, including apparel and accessories, home goods, body care, packaged foods, gifts, and kids and pet toys. Read on to learn about Acorn General Store’s background and what you can expect during a visit.
The Backstory
As partners in business and life, Darya Mishina and Jacob Baccus are the team behind Acorn General Store. The two complement one another, with Jacob having a background in education and community engagement and Darya in retail and fashion merchandising.
Their journey started in 2019 when the couple moved to Oklahoma, where Jacob is from. While Darya had historically worked in the corporate fashion world, there was no such thing in Oklahoma, so she decided to hone in on her love of vintage by opening a vintage collective in Oklahoma City. The store opened her to the world of sustainability and how harmful the traditional fashion industry is to our planet. She learned how the secondhand market combats those harmful impacts and developed a passion for it.
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At the same time, Darya and Jacob were transitioning their everyday products to be more sustainable and eliminate harmful toxins. They did thorough research and product testing before landing on the right products that they enjoy using and are effective, and in turn, decided to bring those products to their customers in Oklahoma City.
After three years, Darya and Jacob decided to move back to New Jersey, as Darya is originally from Bloomfield. They immediately started hunting for a store location and knew they wanted to be in Montclair. As Darya told The Montclair Girl, “The community itself was doing a lot of sustainability projects and were understanding of that impact on our planet, so we knew it was the best place for us to be.”
About Acorn General Store
Darya and Jacob are co-owners and founders of Acorn General Store, a derivation of all they learned in Oklahoma and their product testing endeavors. As they described it, they opened a store they would want to shop in themselves. Jacob added, “We’re a store for busy, sustainably minded people who want to shop better so they can live better.”
With his background in education, Jacob strives to help inspire and encourage people to use products they’ll feel good about. He achieves this through the store’s signage and the personal anecdotes that he and Darya share with shoppers about their own experiences with products.
“It’s easier to shop at big box stores, but they aren’t making an effort to make people feel better,” Jacob said. “My mission has been to educate myself about the products and use them so I can help people transition their own lives – even if that means just switching to one thing.”
Darya and Jacob also aim to sell products from small businesses. They believe this is one of the best ways to shop sustainably and help customers feel confident about what they’re purchasing. One of the ways they’re extending this is by opening up the lower level of the store to house products from local sellers. Typically these sellers are confined to short-term markets or products, and the pair wanted to provide consistency. Everything sold here will be vintage, or artisan-made, and fit into Acorn’s sustainability framework.
The name for Acorn General Store comes from their shared time and Jacob’s roots in Oklahoma City, which holds the nickname of Oak City. Since oak trees produce acorns, they felt this was a fitting name for the next iteration of their retail journey, combining who they are as people into the next phase of their lives. This concept also comes to life through a quote they reference from Ralph Waldo Emerson, “The creation of a thousand forests is in one acorn,” which speaks to their belief in how small changes can lead to greater impact.
Grand Opening
Acorn General Store soft-opened its doors on July 3rd and will host a grand debut in the neighborhood on Friday, September 6th, with a ribbon-cutting ceremony. It will be a weekend filled with activities and giveaways, including a tote bag gift with a $25 purchase, snacks, and refreshments to allow customers to sample items sold in the store, special guests like a health-minded cookie company and a local flower shop from Verona, and raffles. There are additional perks for Acorn Club Members, the store’s loyalty program that allows customers to earn points to score deals.
See More: Phantasm: Downtown Jersey City’s Newest Vintage Collective
Acorn General Store is open Tuesday through Saturday from 11AM to 7PM and Saturday from 11AM to 5PM. The store is closed on Sundays.
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