In Business of Home ’s series Shop Talk , we chat with owners of home furnishings stores across the country to hear about their hard-won lessons and challenges, big and small. This week, we spoke with Neffi Walker, an interior designer and the owner of the Philadelphia store The Black Home.

Avowed Manhattanite though she is—having grown up and launched her career in Harlem—Walker has found tremendous success off the island, operating locations of her store in Jersey City, at Newark airport and in Brooklyn. This summer, she closed those outposts and opened her Philadelphia flagship. The City of Brotherly Love provided the Afro-Latina designer the (literal) space to fulfill her vision of a home store that’s also a cultural center and a place to break bread. She is already at work on her

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