In the Press: Emily Bishop of Japandi Supply House on Healing Through Design
JULY 2025
We’re so honored to be featured in Voyage Denver as part of their Daily Inspiration series. In this interview, we share the deeply personal journey behind Japandi Supply House—from navigating the darkest chapters of our lives to building a brand rooted in peace, purpose, and design that heals.
This article also beautifully captures what Japandi truly means to us: a way of living with intention, clarity, and calm—where less really feels so much better than more.
Read on for the full feature:
Today we’d like to introduce you to Emily Bishop.
Hi Emily, so excited to have you on the platform. So before we get into questions about your work-life, maybe you can bring our readers up to speed on your story and how you got to where you are today?
In 2020, when trying to find inspiration for a calming bedroom interior there was an image with the word ‘Japandi’, immediately evoking a peaceful feeling. Intuition guided us to start a Japandi journey.
We began to incorporate Japandi fundamentals (minimalism, natural materials, neutral colors, comfort) into our home and daily lives in an effort to calm ourselves (primarily Kevin) down. We ran a successful design and marketing agency in Chicago for nearly 20 years, but the pandemic had a very negative impact on the business as our services were the first to be cut by clients. Along with being locked down in our home for months and our business in decline, Kevin was learning to live with presumed CTE from his 12+ years of playing contact sports.
We quickly had to find ways to calm down, while also finding a new source of income, in order to survive.
CTE is rough on the individual and friends/family, but it provided us an opportunity to make positive life changes to ease CTE’s effects on your daily existence. For us, Japandi was the pathway to these positive changes – we’ve done it, and believe in its transformative influence as part of a larger routine – so much so that we founded Japandi Supply House later that same year.
We see Japandi Supply House as a vehicle for us to help others (and the planet) heal. It’s a HUGE idea. It’s an IMPACTFUL idea. It’s an idea that goes against commonly accepted overconsumption in the US. It’s also an idea that can help anyone suffering from all too common mental illness (depression, anxiety).
It’s a reminder for humans to take care of themselves, love themselves, embrace less and the calm that brings to your life, celebrate nature and make the most of your time. Be kind to yourself and to others and watch the ripple effect. By making changes in our consumption and by disrupting our input with positivity, love and hope, we can help calm down humans + the planet.
Japandi Supply House® is a lifestyle and home brand driven to help calm down humans and the planet through conscious living. Japandi Supply House seeks out the harder-to-find, thoughtfully designed + next-level cozy in all things Japandi to share with you. Shop Japandi furniture, home goods, lifestyle and get inspired by visiting our Japandi Design Gallery, all on ShopJapandi.com. 😌🌱💕
I’m sure it wasn’t obstacle-free, but would you say the journey has been fairly smooth so far?
Most challenging is surviving the symptoms of CTE, as days can be extremely unpredictable, and financial resources. Fortunately, our background of having an agency allowed us to do all of the work of launching the business and creating/building the store ourselves. But we’re completely self-funded, so that’s always a challenge.
Current challenges include:
- Uncertain economy, consumer confidence and tariffs
- Funding – we need financial resources to further market the idea
- Adding partners, team, resources – currently just the two of us
- Creating Japandi awareness
- Finding solutions for global logistics as they fluctuate
Over time we began to identify the core values of both wabi-sabi and hygge – which when mixed together create the magic of Japandi. In our view these are minimalism, nature, neutrals + comfort. Japandi gave us the building blocks to calm our life down, reduce stress and midigate mental health symptoms.
In late 2024 we sold our home in Chicago, embracing the minimalist lifestyle we’d been shaping – we let go of everything. We moved to Colorado in December 2024 with Simone (our dog), computers and Jeep. Currently we are exploring and working non-stop on Japandi.
VOYAGE DENVER
Originally published on Voyage Denver. Shared here with gratitude. 😌🌱💕
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