Eclectic vibes and small business vendors are finding a new home in Easton’s Paris-inspired Belleville Market. The shop was opened by Warren Clark and his husband Derrick in their latest business venture.
The Clarks opened a brick-and-mortar location for their business, Domaci, in 2016. The physical Domaci location closed in January and, looking for their next opportunity, the couple reached out to the Easton Antique Emporium about combining Domaci’s merchandise with the already established, small-business-centered marketplace.
The owners of the Easton Antique Emporium, after a while, were no longer interested in running the shop but were willing to let the Clarks take over. Taking this opportunity, the couple decided to redesign the Emporium into what is now the Belleville Market.
“The more research we did and the more time we ended up spending [in Easton], the more we fell in love with the city,” Clark said. “It’s like the sixth borough of New York, but a small town out of a Hallmark movie at the same time.”
Along with the Domaci brand, the new market features about 70 different merchants, including 60 percent of the original vendors from the Easton Antique Emporium.
“We really would like to set ourselves up as being kind of a one-stop shop for anyone, like at Christmas time if you come in, and you could get something for literally everyone on your gift list,” Clark said. “We have stuffed animals for kids, and we’ll soon have a vendor selling baby clothes and children’s clothes … And then we have vintage clothing that has proved very popular, especially with the Lafayette students.”
Because the vendors work under a 90-day lease, there is always something new for visitors to explore, providing small businesses with opportunities to sell their goods.
“There’s definitely options for artists and artisans and people that want to kind of test the waters as a small business,” Clark said. “We’d kind of like to be a small business incubator of sorts, for people that really want to test the waters and get out there without a huge commitment.”
For those too busy to search Belleville Market’s shelves for gifts, the market has developed a creative solution. With the help of its concierge service, you can fill out an online form and the staff at the shop’s staff will use the criteria to select the perfect gift for friends or family members.
Not only does Belleville Market have a collection of unique items to explore, but it also hosts a variety of community events.
“We’ll have live music. We have food samplings, drink samplings … We’ve done pop-up markets there before,” Clark said. “We actually had a former New York Magazine fashion editor in this past weekend who did a clothing pop-up shop with some of the pieces that she’s curated over the years. So there’s always something fun going on.”
Although Belleville Market just opened in July, students are already exploring all that the shop has to offer.
“I definitely felt recharged after leaving the store,” Shreya Suresh ‘25 said. “The staff is so sweet. They had so many little nooks and crannies full of goodies and little treasures you could find, and I didn’t even know where to look because there were so many cute things, and it was a great experience to go in.”
“I one thousand percent recommend to anybody to go there because I’m going back for sure,” Suresh continued. “[It’s] my favorite spot downtown right now.”
