Owner of Spaces and Places, Sally Lee, is right at home in Magill Road’s homewares hub.

Before Sally Lee opened Spaces and Places on Magill Road, she was something of a homewares addict.

“The funny thing is, before I opened this shop… because I was always in the furniture business, I actually always came to visit to see what other people were doing,” Sally says.

“I used to have a factory manufacturing sofas down at Wingfield, so that was my first business, manufacturing and importing furniture. So my background is always in furniture and homeware.”

Moving into retail was a natural progression for Sally, and when she was looking for a space in 2010, it was an easy decision to move to Magill Road to become part of the burgeoning homewares hub.

Rather than seeing competition along the strip, Sally sees the benefit in building a similarly minded community.

“Sometimes when a customer comes in and says they’re looking for such and such thing, and I know that I don’t have [it], what I’ll do is I’ll recommend them to go to the next door, Twopairs, the florist, or Outside Square, knowing that they might carry the stuff they’re looking for,” Sally says.

“I pick the style that I think is suitable for our clientele. Because we’re very different – we’re not into that glamorous kind of look, but we want the modern, sleek, clean lines and a bit of colour.

“Because I import [this] all in myself, it’s a bit different to other homewares shops. I probably have to say about 90% of my homewares here I source it myself from overseas, so it’s a bit different.”

Spaces and Places has also adapted over the years to be more than just homewares.

“I introduced clothing and jewelry probably about five years [ago] now… because when women come out and shop for the homewares, they also want to shop for something personal and for themselves,” Sally explains.

Beyond introducing more homewares (“It’s always good to have more homewares shops. I don’t mind it,” Sally says), she sees the need for a slightly more expanded food and beverage offering in the area.

“I just think that maybe Magill Road should have a couple more nice cafes, that will bring even more people to this area,” Sally says.

“At the moment we have [a few] but a lot of them don’t open on Sunday, so that doesn’t help the business. If we can have another nice one that opens seven days a week, it will bring more people.”