Filson’s New York flagship store in mid-town Manhattan occupies a 4,000-square-foot former mattress store in an 1800s brownstone located on Broadway, near Union Square. The store showcases the product line in an immersive experience that brings the brand to life in the heart of the city. Founded in 1897 to meet the needs of prospectors traveling through Seattle on their way to the Klondike Gold Rush, this 120-year-old company is intrinsically tied to the history of the Pacific Northwest. Filson designs, manufactures, and sells men’s and women’s outdoor clothing, accessories, and luggage, and has earned a worldwide reputation for creating products that are built to last, made in America, and guaranteed for life. Inspired by that ethos, the Heliotrope design team, in collaboration with Filson, and an elite team of builders, craftspeople and fabricators, made it their focus to create a retail space that shared the same level of quality and integrity as the product Filson sells.

We started by buying a barn. Literally, an abandoned barn in Oregon that we found for sale on-line.  We dismantled it and shipped the rough-hewn wood siding, posts and beams to Nelson, British Columbia, home of Spearhead, a specialty fabricator and one of our partners. In collaboration with Spearhead, using this salvaged material, we conceived of a post-and-beam “barn interior” that we constructed inside the store’s 18-feet-tall, double-height space, that the customer inhabits immediately upon entering from the street.