Monterey Peninsula - 65° Magazine

I always sketched cars as a little kid; anything that was moving I loved.
PERSONA
As a child, Mike Poppleton practiced calligraphy. It
was part of his Japanese heritage and the foundation
for his appreciation of design that would carry
him through his college years and into his professional
life as a designer and retailer.
“In calligraphy, you have to consider the balance,
the overall impact and aesthetics,” explains
Poppleton, who sits among his expansive furniture
store in Monterey. The collection that surrounds
him echoes his appreciation of design—there are
Italian imports, hand finished and ornately etched,
as well as a collection of jaw-dropping antiques.
But Poppleton’s Furnishings & Interior Design
wasn’t always Poppleton’s, the eponymous shop
housed on Lighthouse Avenue. Before it was
Poppleton’s, the largest retailer of furniture on
the Monterey Peninsula, it was Butcher Block and
Barstools, a small furniture store in Capitola.
Twenty-seven years ago, Poppleton acquired
Butcher Block and Barstools through an ad in the
Businesses For Sale section of the Wall Street
Journal. “It was only one year old and a small
store so I bought it,” tells Poppleton. “From there
it just kept growing.” As the store transformed,
its original name no longer fit with the upscale
inventory. “It came down to Poppleton’s and
Dovetails. I wanted Dovetails, but the staff said
Poppleton’s is better, so I said ‘okay, let’s do it.’”
Poppleton trusts his employees. He humbly
says that hiring excellent people is one thing he
can take credit for. Poppleton has 13 people
on payroll, which he says is “not bad for a Mom
and Pop shop.” But it’s really just a Pop shop, as
Poppleton oversees it all himself.
Poppleton wasn’t always a retailer. Before selling
highly stylized goods, he made them. With a
degree in Industrial Design from San Jose State
University, Poppleton pursued car styling. He had
a love of cars even as a child. “I always sketched
cars as a little kid; really anything that was moving,
I loved,” he says. His love of cars continued into his
teen years when he dreamed of being a car stylist.
A summer internship program at GM made that
dream a reality, and shortly after college GM hired
him to work on their design team. Among his
favorite tasks was converting a Cadillac Seville for
the Geneva Auto Show. “We put in Rolls Royce
leather and modified the interior, the exterior,
and shipped it to Geneva,” exclaims Poppleton,
whose voice fills with excitement as he talks about
the project.
While he liked the job at GM, he hated the
weather and looked for a reason to move back
to California. He found it in a Wall Street Journal
ad, and thus Mike Poppleton the designer was
replaced with Mike Poppleton the retailer.
But before there was Mike Poppleton the designer,
there was Mike Poppleton the child in Washington
State, and before that, Hawaii, and even
before that he was a little boy named Manibou
Arai (Manibou translated means to study and
learn) living in Japan. Mike Poppleton acquired
his current name through his stepfather, Sydney
Robert Poppleton, who was in the Navy and met
Mike’s mother during the war. The family took
Poppleton as their surname and began a new life
in the United States.
Despite being given the name by his stepfather,
Mike Poppleton has made a name for himself. From
his teen years as the National Judo Champion of his
division (his success got him a scholarship to SJSU)
to his adult years as proprietor of his namesake
shop, Poppleton is fully Poppleton.
And his store seems to reflect all the parts of
himself. There’s the gorgeous leather couches,
reminiscent of his early GM days, Asian-inspired art
hangs on the walls, and most notably, hand-drawn
tags adorn each piece of his furniture. Poppleton
sketches each piece of furniture on a small card
and hand-writes a history of the product. He says
he draws the tags to make it easier for him to keep
track of sales, but like the calligraphy he learned as
a child, the strokes perform double duty as both
art and story. °
Photo Direction:
Shot on Location:
Richard Perez-Pacheco
Poppleton’s Furnishings & Interior Design
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