Stepping into Pink Salvage Gallery LLC, a newly opened store at the west end of downtown Spokane, is a bit like stepping into a vintage wonderland.

The eye candy greeting visitors to the shop, located in the historic Luminaria building at 154 S. Madison, ranges from worn and weathered pieces of vintage furniture to glitter-encrusted handmade paper crowns and repurposed industrial light fixtures.

Pink opened its doors in July, and is owned by a four-woman team of creative mavens.

Its owners include Chris Lynch, a retired teacher and local artist; Celeste Shaw, who also owns Chaps Coffee Co. LLC restaurant and its bakery counterpart here, Cake; and Erica Parish and Lana Neumann, who also operate a business called Deja Neu that's focused on transforming industrial salvage pieces into furniture.

That team is complemented by vendors and long-time friends Holly Baublitz and Becky Ellis of All That Glitter, a Spokane-based business that offers handmade shabby-chic and vintage-inspired accessories and dcor items.

While Baublitz and Ellis don't have an ownership interest in Pink, Shaw says that the two women give just as much of their time and effort as everyone else to help run the 2,500-square-foot shop.

All six women contribute their own handmade creations and other vintage finds to Pink's constantly changing sales inventory, creating a harmonious blend of feminine, rustic, and artsy pieces.

"We all do the same thing. We just do it in a bit of a different aspect, and that is what makes the group so cohesive," Parish says. "We all offer our customers a little bit different things."

Baublitz and Ellis are considered amongst the group as the brainchildren behind the accessories placed throughout the store that give a feminine touch to the worn-out looking pieces in the shop, the others say.

"Holly can look at something in a pile and can put it all together; she is great with displays," says Ellis.

Before joining the team at Pink, Baublitz and Ellis ran their business out of a small space at 10623 E. Trent in Spokane Valley, and also sold their items at area events and sales.

Shaw is described as the "hunter and gatherer" of the business, contributing a wide range of ideas and pieces to the sales floor.

"Celeste has a taste for all types of pieces, whether industrial, farm, art, to architectural salvage and she can put all of those ideas and designs into a room," Parish says.

Adds Neumann, "It almost comes out to a French country-chic industrial look; I can't explain it other than that."

The price points of items there range from as little as $2 into the thousands of dollars for a custom-made piece of furniture or a rare antique find, they say.

"It's not like an antique mall with certain sections for each vendor," Shaw says. "We hope it blends seamlessly from the front of the store to the back."

Adds Baublitz, "That's what makes us different. You have junk, antiques, and furniture; but we bring all of that together and show you how to use it in your house from just decorating the top of a cabinet to an entire room."

For example, Parish and Neumann take industrial salvage pieces and convert them into pieces of furniture that are displayed in the back of the shop.

Those pieces include custom dining tables with tabletops made from a repurposed wooden butcher block or an old section of a bowling alley lane attached to a piece of heavy-duty industrial equipment for the base.

"Most of the things we do are heavy, so we do a lot of casters to make them more mobile and functional to make them work for people's homes," Neumann says.

The two also create industrial-style light fixtures out of unusual components, such as the grill covering of an old farm tractor.

Parish and Neumann started Deja Neu about five years ago, and in addition to selling their creations at Pink, they also have some items for sale at a shop called Useful Vintage Goods in Seattle's historic Georgetown neighborhood.

Other items are featured on a website called 1stdibs.com on which collectors and vendors buy and sell antique, vintage, and mid-century furniture, lighting, jewelry, art, and other items.

Some of Parish and Neumann's pieces have been sold to buyers across the world, as well as to big-name retailers and designers—including Nordstrom, Ralph Lauren, and Cole Haan—that use their pieces as store display fixtures, they say.

A recent find involved the purchase of 4,000 pounds of metal printing equipment from a shuttered Spokane printing business. They plan to use that equipment to make bases for tables and other pieces of furniture.

Says Shaw, "One of the key parts of what they do is that a lot of people would have seen it as scrap; now it will be recreated into amazing furniture when it could have been seen as junk."

Neumann says that she and Parish have a network of contacts across the U.S. She says those buyers regularly contact them when they come across pieces at estate sales or other events that they think the two would be interested in.

While the front of Pink's sales floor has various country-chic pieces adorned with Baublitz's and Ellis' glittered paper creations and the back mostly is devoted to Parish's and Neumann's heavy pieces, a small nook of the store serves as an art gallery.

What once served as the building's vault, with a massive steel door at its entrance, has been converted into a quaint gallery for Lynch's artwork. Her work includes watercolor landscapes, pen-and-ink drawings, and artistic handmade flags that are created out of old fabric and drop cloth.

Lynch's watercolors for sale there are creating using a type of paint called casein, which is milk-based and has been used since ancient Egyptian times. She says all of her landscapes are of scenes in the Inland Northwest that she paints outdoors in the actual setting.

Aside from her artwork that's for sale there, Lynch also sews various items such as aprons, bags, and pillows that are featured in the shop.

"I love to recycle anything, and I love to look at a piece and think of a new use," she says.

Aside from her role as a co-owner of Pink, Lynch says she and her biological sisters several times a year also hold sales, simply called the Sisters' Sales, at various locations throughout the Spokane area. At those sales, they offer various vintage pieces they've collected along with other handmade items, she says.

Despite the business's namesake being a color, the store's interior isn't dominated by hues of magenta and bubblegum.

"People come in and expect to see the color all over, but there isn't really anything pink," says Lynch.

The shop's color palette more aptly could be described as consisting of warm shades of cream and brown, accented with old rusted metals and the yellowed paper of aged books and decades-old watercolor paintings. The occasional pop of color from a vintage rhinestone brooch or a brightly-upholstered old-fashioned chair stands out amongst the earthy neutrals.

Shaw says the business's name was inspired by a well-known quote from actress Audrey Hepburn, who said, "I believe in pink. I believe that laughing is the best calorie burner ... I believe that tomorrow is another day, and I believe in miracles."

"It's a really beautiful quote about life," Shaw says, adding that her grandmother repeated the quote often.

She says she registered the business name back in 1993 after Hepburn died of breast cancer because she had hoped at the time eventually to own a business named Pink.

Shaw balances her time between Pink and her other business here, Chaps restaurant and Cake bakery, in south Spokane, as well as contributing to an international magazine called Where Women Create, among many other interests.

Shaw's husband, Dr. Daniel Coulston, who practices critical care medicine through Deaconess Medical Center, also helps out at Pink. She says he enjoys helping Parish and Neumann build some of their salvage furniture pieces.

The six women behind Pink met each other several years ago at various Spokane-area events and sales that feature vendors of vintage, antique, and handmade items. One of those events at which they participated in before starting the business was The Farm Chicks Antiques Show, a locally-organized event that takes place at the Spokane County Fair & Expo Center for a weekend in the summer.