PHOTOS BY KAITLYN HUGHES

Growing up in the Philippines, Jennie Zoe Mape Reyes was consistently exposed to items sold at her parents’ export business, such as placemats, baskets and handbags — all of them handcrafted.

“That made me appreciate more of the natural and handmade,” she says.

Reyes knew the lessons she learned growing in the business would benefit her for the rest of her life — and it has.

Today, Reyes operates AZ Home Details LLC on Seventh Avenue in Pittsburgh; it is Downtown’s first Filipina-owned store. Pillows, jewelry, clothing and handwoven items — all from local artisans — line the shelves of the shop.

Some of the displays within the store are revamped pieces, including a vintage headboard from 1905 that Reyes cleverly turned into a shelf; it now stands in the window of her store.

“Everything you see here — there’s kind of like a story,” Reyes says.

The store is a part of the Pittsburgh Downtown Partnership’s Project Pop-Up, an effort that started about two years ago to activate vacant storefronts Downtown with a focus on increasing retail occupancy.

Cate Irvin, PDP’s senior director of economic development, worked with Reyes throughout the process of opening her storefront.

“We were just really excited to bring someone like Jennie to Downtown because there isn’t a lot of home goods and gift shops of her caliber,” Irvin says.

Project Pop-Up is part of a larger plan to uplift the economy within the city. Its overall goal is to give emerging retailers a platform, while contributing to the diversity of the Downtown experience.

“Working with Jennie and seeing AZ come to life has been one of my all-time favorite professional endeavors,” Irvin adds.

After attending college, Reyes worked for her father as the head of product design and development, which included attending worldwide houseware and gift trade shows. Eventually, Reyes and her husband, Jose, opened their own store, Home Details, in the Philippines, where they sold furniture and home decor.

Today, the name of Reyes’ Pittsburgh store honors her parents, Alfredo and Zenaida, as well as her and her husband’s former store.

Getting to this point was decades in the making. When Reyes moved to Pennsylvania in 2002, she was a busy stay-at-home mom running two children around to their extracurricular activities. When the kids were in high school, Reyes took a part-time retail job, moving from sales associate to store manager.

She says these experiences are what gave her the confidence to operate her own business again. In August 2021, she opened a cozy store in the Westmoreland County community of Norvelt that sold local and handmade objects.

With her Downtown shop, Reyes originally planned on a six-month pop-up collaboration with PDP; she later decided to continue for another three to six months. Reyes says her hope is the location continues to stay open within the city.

She notes PDP was a large help in opening her business, including assisting her in finding the best location for her goods and sharing the events hosted at AZ Home Details online.

Along with the PDP’s goal to revitalize Downtown, Reyes’s business also gives back to the community. The items Reyes carries in her collection are either sustainable or handmade, which she says raises awareness of goods that do not bring harm to the environment.

Reyes has also continued to pay tribute to her roots in the Philippines, incorporating different items, such as handbags and shoes from her native country, into the store’s collections.

Her dream is to show other immigrants that with hard work, they also can also live out their success story in America.

“It’s an honor because maybe somebody like me can open a store someday,” Reyes says.