I love that my business has the ability to offer a variety of price points, styles, and products. At Frickin Fab you have the ability to shop new furniture, used furniture, vintage furniture and repurposed furniture. This approach to business has allowed us to be an approachable shop for a variety of customers, we attract people looking for high end products and customers looking to furnish their college dorm. We want everyone to be able to shop with us. Our store is crafted and curated in such a way that we have something for everyone. We pride ourselves on this and with that have become a destination for furniture and home decor in the Tampa Bay area.

My name is Emily Frick and I started in the furniture and decor industry as a vendor who rented a booth space. I would drive around on trash night and find furniture on the side of the road. I would refinish it and sell it. I have been painting walls and furniture since I was a kid, my mom always encouraged us to be creative with our rooms and furniture. She even let me puff paint flowers on a vintage maple china hutch i kept in my room. (Now I cringe at the thought of this.) My stores are located in South Tampa and offer unique and eclectic furniture and home decor. We also offer plants and garden accessories with our outdoor living furniture and decor. A lot of my clients love their furniture but it is the wrong color and does not fit in their home the way they want it to. Older furniture is typically higher quality and we wanted to offer custom painting and have a team that goes to the clients home and paints their furniture. They dont have to worry about bringing their furniture to us or arranging pick-up or drop-off, we go to them and eliminate all the hassle. If our customers want to paint their furniture themselves, we also sell the paint and teach them how to do it on their own.

I bought my business and then built upon it. I was a vendor in the business and the owner mentioned giving the business to another vendor to run. I told her she should sell it, because she had built a customer base and brand recognition (insert foot in mouth, I didn’t realize I was going to be the one buying it). After that conversation my husband and I made a unique offer to the owner that allowed the business to finance itself over one year. We worked the store and gave the business a fresh look and were able to make enough profit in that year for the business to pay for itself. We paid an initial down payment, we cashed in all our investments and cleared out our savings account and took over all the business expenses and made two balloon payments during the next year. We have now been in business for almost 10 years.

I am sure a lot of businesses learned how resilient they were during covid. I can remember the week that the government ordered all non essential businesses to shut down. We were posting everything we had on social media so people could shop online. We delivered everything and worked harder than we had ever worked to make enough money to pay our overhead costs. We got creative and had a garden space, and filled that garden with herbs and vegetables which made our store an “essential” business allowing us to reopen. Our creativity kept the doors open and we worked hard to keep and accommodate all of our customers.