24-03-2025
Asian home goods and snack shop opens in Des Moines
A new Asian home goods and snacks shop opened next door to Horizon Line Coffee.
Driving the news: Nam Ho, co-owner of Horizon Line, and his partner, Torri Myers, launched Hotori last weekend.
The shop's name was inspired by a combination of Nam's last name and Myers' first name.
How it started: Ho and his business partner, Brad Penna, opened Horizon Line Coffee in 2017 after moving to Des Moines from California.
After spending several years in the Midwest and building a community of his own, Ho, who is Vietnamese, wanted to open something that felt more connected to his culture.
Meanwhile Myers, who is from Des Moines and is half Korean, also wanted her own shop after working at several small curated stores, including Preservation and Eden.
"We've been together for five, going on six years," Ho says. "So finding something that we both can connect over and grow ourselves was something that I thought was pretty important."
State of play: Hotori's mix of products includes cookbooks, ceramics and hard-to-find snacks.
Many of the curated products were inspired by their travels to California, where modern Asian home goods stores are more common.
Items include minimalist Japanese ceramics, a jam sourced from Jeju Island in South Korea and incense from a Korean American tattoo artist.
What they're saying: A lot of their products are items they've enjoyed themselves. Myers has kept a wrapper from chocolate sourced in Singapore for two years — just for this moment.
"I always knew the store was going to be about identity," Myers says. "Our filter is the majority of things are Asian, Asian American."
If you go: 10am-6pm Tuesday-Saturday; 10am-3pm Sunday; 1417 Walnut St., Suite D, Des Moines.
