Antique furniture store with roots in Europe finds new home in Asheboro

ASHEBORO — Canvas & Cargo has taken a circuitous route to find a home — from southeastern Pennsylvania to England and France to the Heart of North Carolina.

To 508 Hoover St. in Asheboro, to be exact.

Canvas & Cargo is owned by Ashley Tullinen and Jake Snell, a married couple who specialize in antique furniture from Europe, particularly England and France but also pieces from Belgium and Holland.

The two took a break from fixing up their 4,500-square-foot furniture showroom to talk about their new business and how it came about. Tullinen said it goes back to her upbringing.

“I grew up thrifting and antiquing as a necessity,” she said. “We bought second hand and refinished.”

Or, as she says on canvasandcargo.com, “It was ingrained in me from a very young age, reduce, reuse, recycle. Some of the best memories I have are going thrifting with my mom at a young age, rummaging through Salvation Army bins, and starting the next DIY project.”

As for Snell, she says, “And my husband, Jake? Well, he married me.”

They started out doing online sales when, in November 2019, Snell suggested that they become vendors at the Zionsville Antique Mall in Zionsville, PA. They began there in January 2020, just as the COVID-19 pandemic came on the world scene.

“We learned to sell things during the quarantine, delivering and doing online advertising,” Tullinen said. ”We were so busy we broke the sales record of mall vendors.”

She said she spent four years serving overseas in the military “and drew so much inspiration from the quality of pieces found in Europe.” Then the couple vacationed in France and England during 2022 and “started to make a road map of how to import, how to open our own store. Later that year, we began importing furniture from England, and opened our own store two months later.”

That brick-and-mortar store opened in January 2023 in Red Hill, PA, between Allentown and Philadelphia. “We started importing from Europe. We went twice to England,” Snell said.

Tullinen went fulltime at the store after she quit her corporate job as a decision to pursue the antiques full time. It was six weeks after they received their second container and they bet on themselves that they could turn it into a fulltime business if they gave it enough time and dedication. Snell went fulltime in January 2025.

Then last October the couple decided they “wanted something sunnier and to be more a part of a community. It was pretty rural in Pennsylvania,” Tullinen said. “We started looking to relocate somewhere on the East Coast.”

They wanted a location near an airport with direct flights to England, better weather, culture and community. “North Carolina checked all the boxes,” Tullinen said.

They found a house in Greensboro with help from Anne Flater, a realtor based in High Point. Flater guided the couple around the Piedmont, including trips to Asheboro, eating at The Table and learning of the Farmers Market.

“This town had a community feel,” Tullinen said. “There was more focus on small business here. We saw the building come available and all we could think of was becoming part of the community.”

The building on Hoover Street was once a produce warehouse that was twice the size of their Pennsylvania store and has a loading dock, which is important since their furniture comes in 40-foot shipping containers.

The antique furniture is considered Victorian-era or European rustic, most from the 1800s. It’s mostly of pine grown in England and Europe, which is different from the pine that grows in the US.

“Most of the furniture comes in good shape but some needs some fixing,” Snell said. When a piece needs replacement wood, they use old wood from Europe to match the original.

“It’s a challenge to find the right wood,” he said. “It grows slower in England and the colors are different. There’s a lot we had to learn.”

“We’re curious to see how rustic European does in the South,” Tullinen said.

Canvas & Cargo will open to the public on Sept. 2 for three or four days so people can see what’s available. Afterward, it’ll be by appointment only, with the store working with the customer’s schedule. If a potential buyer is looking for a certain piece, the couple will try to find it, although “scarcity has gone up the last year or two.”

Canvas & Cargo also has furniture at the Fiddle & Fig, a home goods store at 107 S. Stratford Road, Winston-Salem. But most of the sales are still online.

Meanwhile, Tullinen said, “We’d like to get out more and explore the local businesses. We desire to be part of the community down here. We’re hoping for less time on the road and sell more locally in the community.”

So, where did the name — Canvas & Cargo — come from?

As Tullinen says on the website: 

“Nothing tickles my heart more than finding a piece of furniture I fall in love with, so there’s Cargo. As for Canvas, I was really drawn to the vision I saw with that word. What it means to have a blank slate, something to start fresh with and call your own.”

That’s kind of what Tullinen and Snell are doing in Asheboro.