Since 1980, LaDIFF has been changing the experience of shopping for home furnishings.
Over our lifetime, LaDIFF has enjoyed many personalities: from a small shop selling Haitian handcrafts, to a full home store replete with kitchen, bath, and closet storage departments in Charlottesville, to the international furniture emporium you came to know in Shockoe. Our physical spaces have ranged from ultra-modern with lots of glass to juxtapositions with century-old architecture. Our neighborhoods have been both suburban and urban.
Change is part of our DNA, and our newest endeavor keeps that tradition. LaDIFF’s new home at 1011 Commerce Road in Richmond’s Manchester district offers sweeping views of our city skyline in a neighborhood that is both industrial and ‘up and coming’. New apartment buildings emerge between truck depots and warehouses. It’s Richmond’s next frontier, and we are thrilled to have some green space (and parking!) in the midst of it.
While we have more outdoor space, we have a smaller showroom. Why? The reasons are both personal and business-related. LaDIFF founder, Andy Thornton, has been itching to retire for a few years, but Sarah Paxton, his wife and business partner, wanted the store to continue. Both wanted to reduce the scale of LaDIFF – we loved our 14th Street building but it was a BIG building to fill with furniture, not to mention to heat or cool!
Smaller means an edited mix of furniture, for sure, but there will be few sacrifices in availability. We’ve chosen to continue with suppliers with whom we have strong relationships, who offer exceptional customer service, and who are moving forward with options for virtual shopping.
While our website will continue to give you a taste of what you’ll see when you visit LaDIFF, we encourage you to use these online resources for information before or while you shop. When it comes time to make a decision, however, we believe that choosing quality furnishings is best accomplished in person, both for the sensory experiences but also for the one-on-one relationship you will establish with your LaDIFF design consultant.
Feel free to reach out by web chat, email, or phone before you visit. You can also create a wish list to share when you visit! Your inspiration plus their vision, talent, and expertise will be the recipe for helping you create spaces you’ll love for many years.
We hope you enjoy your online browsing, but what we really want is to make your “in person” shopping experience at LaDIFF informative, easy, fun, and successful.
LaDIFF is extremely proud to source goods for our customers that are of high quality and that will provide many years of satisfactory and functional use.
We are committed to the responsible use of forest resources in selecting our furniture and the relationships we develop and nurture with our suppliers. We do our utmost to ensure that any wood product is legitimately harvested and where possible we select material and suppliers that are certified by the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC).
LaDIFF further is firmly committed to avoiding wood from unacceptable sources, including:
- Illegally harvested or traded timber
- Timber harvested in violation of traditional or civil rights
- Timber harvested from areas in which high conservation values are threatened by poor forest management
- Timber harvested from areas being converted from forests to plantations or non-forest use
We actively seek partnerships and relationships with independent, small family owned businesses in the US, Canada, and Europe who are conscious of/and control their sourcing of lumber.
Where possible LaDIFF sources and uses recycled or reclaimed material. This includes most of the displays in our showroom that are recycled lumber from our personal home and reclaimed timber from our personal land.
LaDIFF is highly concerned about our global footprint and wherever possible recycles or re-uses most – if not all – of the cardboard and plastic that is used in packaging and in our daily activities.
