Denver’s Yes Please Has All The Sassy Goods You Didn’t Know You Needed

 If you’ve ever been to the Denver Flea, a seasonal flea market meets hipster heaven, you’ve likely come across Craft Boner. Owned an operated by Kiwi Schloffel, the custom card and gift company is known for its inappropriate, but often poignant sayings. All of the items are designed by Schloffel herself and as a result, the company has long been a one-woman show. That is until she recently decided to partner with another local company, The Moore Collection, to create a permanent residence for Craft Boner. Named Yes Please the brand new store is a shared space between the two businesses. Moore Collection, owned by Tanner Barkin and Taylor Palmie, is like Craft Boner in the sense it focuses on custom designs. But instead of cards and mugs, the screen printing business creates shirts, hats and other small goods that have a distinctly Colorado feel. We spoke with the two businesses to learn more about why they decided to join forces, and what to expect from the store located in the Five Points neighborhood of Denver.

Kiwi Schloffel: I got really sick for a couple of weeks in June and I think the name came to me in a fever dream. I had a really vivid dream about my shop and exactly what I’d want it to look like and when I woke up I vaguely remember muttering, “Uh, yes please!” before falling back to sleep and that was pretty much the aha moment. I wanted something that conveyed the idea of fun and in my head it’s impossible to say yes please without some kind of sass. Luckily Taylor and Tanner were totally on board with it right away.

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Taylor Palmie: When I was little I was always the kid selling toys from my front yard and I hoped that I could open up a store of some sort when I was older. When we first started printing t-shirts it was always our dream to have a store a few years down the road that sold the products that we make. Since we always felt that doing our own production in-house was something that set us apart, we wanted to have retail and production in one so that we could not only be at the shop working while our store was open but to also open up our doors for people to see the backend of how all of the products they buy in store are made.

KS:  I used to play shop owner when I was a kid with a cardboard scanner and conveyer belt and everything, so, yeah, I’ve dreamed about it since before I had even given Craft Boner a name. With such huge demand for space in Denver and being a one-woman operation I never thought that it could actually happen.

TP: We have known Kiwi for a while and over time we felt like although our brands are very different, we share a lot of the same values and passion for what we do. When the lease at our old warehouse was coming up we knew we wanted to expand and move into a bigger and better space. The three of us always wanted to have a place where people could shop and where we could also work. Both of our old studios could accommodate this to a point but it never really worked well. It can also sometimes feel difficult to continuously find the drive to keep your business thriving so we felt like sharing a space with a like-minded individual like Kiwi would create a motivating atmosphere for us all to stay excited about the growth of our businesses.

KS: I like to think that our businesses are not only in a similar stage of growth, but also that they’re pretty similar in the fact that they both evoke strong feelings in our customers. Moore Collection is more like Reese Witherspoon in Wild and Craft Boner is more like Reese Witherspoon in Legally Blonde — you love both versions of Reese Witherspoon but for completely different reasons. In that way, I feel like Yes Please has a split personality that will appeal to a wide audience and works in a really weird way that people won’t be able to explain.

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303: How did you choose the location?

TP: When we first started looking for spaces we were really interested in RiNo since we live there and it feels like home to our brand and business. As we began looking at all of our options nothing felt completely right for our needs so we started looking further out of the neighborhood. We were kind of familiar with Clayton but it wasn’t on the top of our list right away. The second we toured our 38th & Steele Street location we fell in love. It not only has the character of an old warehouse which is perfect for retail but it also accommodates to all of our production needs so that we can all have everything in one space.

KS: Taylor & Tanner found the space and even seeing it under construction I was 100 percent in. I love the industrial feel of the row of warehouses and I already had huge business crushes on A Small Print Shop and Winter Session so I loved that they’d be our neighbors. Plus, I live in the neighborhood and my lifelong goal of riding my bike to work with a puppy in the basket can now become reality.

KS:  My favorite part of owning a business is doodling and coming up with new products so there will definitely be an influx of new work from me in the shop on the regular. I’ll also have some Craft Boner exclusives for Yes Please and I’m stocking the shop with a bunch of flair for jean jackets, wrapping paper, pens, washi tape and other fun things.

TP: We will be offering everything that we sell online in store. We launch four-five new collections per year so we will be refreshing the store every time we launch new products and will always have our classics available as well.