Buying online for your home offers traceability back to the artisan maker

A chat and a chance meeting on a train led to the creation of a new online store which makes a virtue of selling items which are sustainable and traceable, but which also have a strong design ethic, writes Carol O’Callaghan.

Sometimes the great things in life happen by chance, which is exactly how PR agency owner Laura Fearnall and sustainability consultant Claire Hamer-Stubbs came to set up their online interiors shop, The People’s Emporium.

It was while travelling by train to London from the Paris interiors show, Maison et Objet, that they found themselves sitting opposite Rebecca Hoyes who at the time was a senior designer for Habitat.