Two best friends, Diane Ormrod and Dorothee Walliser, opened “French and Scouser,” a furniture and design store on St. Thomas that resells home goods and provides interior design services.
Located at Prime Storage, behind the Roy L. Schneider Hospital, the store has a modern aesthetic created by the used and new products being sold. Opened in July, the store has been buzzing with individuals interested in purchasing secondhand or repurposed products.
“It’s mainly consignment, but we also have new home goods and accessories,” said Ormrod. “We don’t sell appliances.”
According to Ormrod, the duo has been in business since 2012. They originally had a business in New York that served as a boutique hotel and retail space where they sold vintage goods. Items in the rooms at the hotel were available to be sold to guests.
“Dorothee and I are best friends, we’re like sister friends, and we’ve been in business together a long time. And I just love coming here and wanted to find a way to stay here. It was kind of like a place where we would come and every year we would come and say, ‘Well, how can we stay a little longer, how do we live here,’” Omrod explained.
“We’ve been friends for 23 years,” added Walliser.
They met through their careers in publishing and have been inseparable since.
“I lost my job because my company was purchased, and I just decided I really didn’t want to go back into the grind of the corporate life. And she was also doing freelance,” said Walliser.
After Ormrod purchased a home in upstate New York, Walliser said she attended estate sales and auctions with her while she furnished her home.
“All of a sudden, we realized, ‘Oh my god, these things are going for so low, and they’re so beautiful, maybe we can do something,’ and that’s how it started. It was completely organic,” said Walliser.
She said they started selling items online and everything grew from there.
Once they decided to move to St. Thomas, “In 2020, I felt like a lot of stuff was expensive,” said Ormrod, and added that there was also not a huge selection of items to source on island. “We wanted to have something where we could present beautiful things to people at a pretty reasonable price, and also keep things out of that big massive landfill that we got here.”
Items like dressers, desks, side tables, lamps, chairs, and glasses fill the store’s space. Ormrod said she encourages her customers not to simply discard personal items they no longer want because, “Maybe it’s something that might be considered old to you, but to someone else it’s beautiful.”
Of the business, “We had no idea that all of a sudden, as soon as we told people, it was like the flood gates opened,” said Ormrod, who added the pair were not sure how they would be received in the community. “It’s been amazing.”
When asked how they came up with their unique name, they informed that it’s related to their hometowns.
“French because Dorothee is from Paris, and Scouser is me. I’m from Liverpool, and anyone from Liverpool is called a Scouser,” Ormrod said jokingly, who added that the name is also coined from the creators of Absolutely Fabulous and French and Saunders.
Visitors to the store can oftentimes be greeted by Ormrod’s Chihuahua. Hours of operation are 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., Tuesday to Saturday. For more information, call 340-220-2407.
