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From styling to sales and distribution, Andie Cassette has worked in nearly every aspect of the fashion industry for over a decade, culminating in Ri-Ri-Ku, her playful boutique in the Highland Park neighborhood of Los Angeles. Beyond the shop, Cassette’s business is multi-tiered, encompassing wholesale sales distribution, logistics, and domestic e-commerce fulfillment for international brands. But Ri-Ri-Ku is where her eye for jewel-toned vintage bowls, fruit-shaped ceramic salt and pepper shakers, and onyx coaster sets comes to life. I called her up last week while she was at the store to talk candle-making, sourcing locally and abroad, and how she curates Ri-Ri-Ku’s distinct ethereal vibe.
How does Ri-Ri-Ku stand out as a pillar of your business? Is it a way for you to showcase your own taste and curation? With Ri-Ri-Ku we focus a lot more on home goods, lifestyle, just overall vibe—whether that's accessories that you wear, things you want to decorate your house with, or what you want to have as standout pieces in your kitchen or on your dining table. We definitely want to get into designing our own collectsion for Ri-Ri-Ku that is focused on table settings and kitchen stuff. We’re just trying to figure out what we want that to look like because we work with so many amazing designers that already cover so many bases. The other thing that we source for Ri-Ri-Ku is a lot of vintage-inspired stuff, which is a niche that we don’t already find from the incredible makers that we work with.
Beyond the vintage items and wares sourced from specific artisans, you also make your own candles, correct? Yes, we have a little station in the back of the store where we hand-pour all of our candles. Candles actually saved our business last year during the pandemic. Everyone has the one thing that kind of helped them persevere, and the candles were definitely it for us. It blows my mind because it was such a natural, fun little thing that we picked up as an extra way to try to stay in business. And they just took off. We pour them here and we pack them here with all eco-packaging made from recycled products. We definitely want to get into creating our own vintage-inspired molds for that as well.
What do you mean by vintage-inspired molds? Let's say we're out in Tucson sourcing, and we see a vase in a vintage shape that we love. Obviously, vases aren't going to work for mold structures because of the way that you have to pour the candles, so we want to try to work with a 3D designer to create molds that would work based on vintage pieces that we found. We’re hoping to do that in 2022.
That makes me think of the lamp shade candle that you make. I love how it references two types of light in one design. Yeah, and we've been selling these really great fan lamps that are vintage-inspired that we source overseas, so it's fun to have the candle to play off of it, too. This one is single color, but we can do two-tone with most of our candles.
What kind of wax do you use? Are they all unscented? They are all unscented, although scents are something that I definitely want to try to get into. I am obsessed with perfumes and incense, and we work with this amazing LA-based candle brand right now called Mar Mar. It's so hard because we get inspired and we want to do our own scents, but then we meet someone like [Marissa Boswell of Mar Mar] who has all the scents covered, and they're all perfect. Why are we even going to try and mess with that when we already have her line and she's local and she’s amazing? We also just picked up another brand called Bohéme, which is a little bit more clean and minimal but the scents are also very worldly and unique—they smell different when they burn, it's pretty awesome. [For our candles] we use paraffin wax, which is the best type of wax to use for structured and pillar candles because it doesn't warp in the sun. Being in Southern California, we’re very aware of that.
Another item I love of yours are the strawberry salt and pepper shakers. Can you tell me more about them? The [ceramic] salt and pepper shakers are definitely an item that we love sourcing. We always try to pick really catchy ones that we don't see anywhere else. The strawberries were really cute. I think I saw these when I was inland in California. Fruit and animal shakers always sell really well for us. We had jaguars that were super sought-after that we sold during the pandemic. Shakers are always so fun, they’re such a kitschy little kitchen thing.
How do you know when an item is a right fit for Ri-Ri-Ku? My grandfather was a vintage war memorabilia collectsor. He had a huge collectsion, including stuff from the Titanic. Where we lived in Illinois, he had a little shop in Woodstock and I used to go and help him with it. He had very historic, valuable, amazing items—a totally different vibe from Ri-Ri-Ku. But I think it's definitely a feeling; if something reminds me of a certain vibe that I want to convey. I've worked in fashion now for 12 years and have gone to so many different shops and boutiques all over the world, [you start to get a sense] of what it is you want to evoke. Some people say [Ri-Ri-Ku] is feminine. And it definitely has an ethereal vibe. But I think it can work with anyone, anywhere if you have the right eye.
What draws me to your store is how everything has a personality, or the ability to infuse personality into your space at home, but nothing is maximalist. A lot of it is small, fun, and playful. We don’t want it to be overpowering, we don't need to be the loudest thing in your room. But if we can sell things that make people happy every time they look at them, that’s ultimately all I want from this passion project. I've always really wanted to have some semblance of a home goods general store. This is a little bit more unique than that, but I think we can honestly say that a lot of the pieces that we source make our customers happy.
How do most people interact with your store? A huge majority of our sales come from Replica Belts . Now that we have a presence here [in LA] and people know about us, I think we differentiate ourselves in regards to having more of those extra little fun pieces to add, as opposed to the big-ticket furniture items. People come in and they show us what they've purchased for their home, like what tables they got, or ask us how to match something with the couch they have. Or they’re trying to figure out how to decorate their coffee table or some amazing built-in in their living room. That's our ideal customer.
Is there anything fun that you’re doing for the holidays this year? We have new silhouettes for candles that we're pouring here that are taper candles that will come in really bright colors for holiday table dressing. At this point now with people being vaccinated and traveling a lot more, I think they’re finally going to be able to gather safely with friends. I think people are going to be so excited about it that they're going to really deck out their table settings. We're also going to get a proper tree in here to decorate with all these fun, quirky ornaments for sale. That will be a blast.
