There’s a lot of room between the aisles at Monkey Business, a children’s clothing and accessory store in downtown Maple Ridge, and that is by design. When co-owners Karen Pukesh and Shannon Gander were mapping out the store before its launch, they made a point of creating wide spaces so parents could move through with ease while shopping. “It was important to us to have enough room for strollers to maneuver in our store,” Karen says. “We wanted the layout to be totally family friendly, especially for the parents of newborns and little ones.”
Shopping with her young son in a stroller during her maternity leave, Karen found there were stores she just couldn’t go into because of how they were designed. Karen and Shannon had their babies around the same time, and during the first few months, they realized that they were travelling far from their hometown just to pick up a few necessary items. They wanted to stay close to home and shop locally. “We shouldn’t have to leave our community to go shopping,” Karen says. Karen and Shannon saw a niche market and so in 2007, they opened Monkey Business, a family-friendly store that caters to parents needing good quality clothing for their children from preemies and newborns to about eight years old.
