TWO STORES, ONE DOOR
How Kokoro and Kimaya Kama found an unexpected way forward in Maplewood Village
By Amy Lynn-Cramer. Photography by Julia Maloof Verderosa.
A young girl walked into Kokoro carrying a paper flower. She had been coming into the Maplewood store since she was little and wanted to give the handmade gift to Kiyomi Hubert, Kokoro’s longtime store manager. It was for good luck, she explained. She was happy the store was open again.
It was the kind of gesture that might seem small unless you spent more than 30 years behind the counter watching children become teenagers, employees, parents and customers all over again.
“You don’t realize what impact or effect you have on people,” says Susan Onuma, Kokoro owner and Maplewood resident. “You see people for a brief moment of time when they come into the shop.”
For several months, they couldn’t. A ceiling collapse had abruptly closed Kokoro, leaving Onuma to consider whether her season of running a shop was over. At the same time, South Orange resident Kimaya Salaskar learned that the building housing her store, Kimaya Kama, also on Maplewood Avenue, had been sold, and a significant rent increase would force her to make a decision about her business.
One woman had a store she wasn’t sure she could reopen. The other needed somewhere to go.
Today, Kokoro and Kimaya Kama share the renovated storefront at 172 Maplewood Ave. They remain two distinct businesses, with separate inventories, registers and identities. Yet their owners have discovered that what they built separately over decades may have prepared them for what they are building together.
Long before the two women became partners, Onuma was already making space for other women in business. She bought the building in 1991 while practicing law and envisioned it as a home for creative, women-owned businesses.
Then one tenant decided to leave. “My husband’s famous last words were, ‘Well, you always wanted to have a store. Why don’t you try something?’ ” Onuma says.
So she did. In October 1993, she began taking Fridays off from her law practice and opened the store Friday through Sunday. “I thought if I didn’t do well at Christmas, then I probably shouldn’t be in the retail business,” she says.
Christmas went well. Onuma discovered how much she loved the people who came through the door. The store introduced her to the neighbors she hadn’t gotten to know while commuting to New York City. “People of all walks of life would come in, and you begin to appreciate what a wonderful, diverse, vibrant and creative community Maplewood is,” she says.
She named the store Kokoro, a Japanese word meaning heart and spirit. “It turns out Kokoro was actually a very apt name for the purpose that it served for me,” she says. “I always say it’s true retail therapy.”
Years later, Salaskar found her own unexpected path into retail. “I always wanted to open my own business,” she says. “I was a real estate broker in New York City, but once we moved here, I used to wear a lot of my tunics and Indo-Western outfits, and people would ask me where I got them.”
Many had been made for her in India. Salaskar saw an opportunity to bring the simpler, everyday styles she loved to local customers. “I thought, why don’t I open a small business where I can actually sell some of these things?” she says.
Her family in India helped turn the idea into something real. Her mother, brother and sister-in-law encouraged her from the beginning, helping manage customized tunic orders, production and shipping from India. At home, her husband, Manoj, was equally involved.
Kimaya Kama began at street fairs. Eventually, she found a small space in South Orange and opened her first store in late 2011. Two years later, everything changed.
In 2013, at 34, Salaskar was diagnosed with breast cancer. “I went through all my treatments while I ran the store,” she says. “Having the store was a blessing because I would literally go for chemo and then to work.”
Some customers began sharing their own experiences with cancer. “I had people coming in who I had never known had double mastectomies or who had been through cancer,” she says. “There was so much positive energy and support from my customers.”
The relationships became reciprocal. “Sometimes I was a shoulder for someone else to cry on, and sometimes I was the one crying on somebody else’s shoulder,” Salaskar says.
Over time, Salaskar began imagining Kimaya Kama as more than a clothing boutique. “I was trying to expand into home goods besides just the tunics,” she says. In 2015, she found the space to bring that vision to life in Maplewood, where Kimaya Kama would remain for the next 11 years.
Her merchandise expanded to include jewelry, accessories, gifts, home goods, specialty foods and an eclectic mix of products connected by one simple criterion: Salaskar liked them. “My store was always a collection of my favorite items,” she says. “Anything that I liked and I loved, I wanted to have in the store.”
Not long after Salaskar moved Kimaya Kama to Maplewood, Onuma stopped by to welcome her to the neighborhood. The two women crossed paths, shared customers and came to know one another as fellow female business owners. “I always got along with Susan and really liked her,” Salaskar says. “You can make out when somebody is a good person.”
On March 22, 2025, the trajectory of Kokoro changed completely. Onuma was having dinner nearby when she noticed fire trucks outside her building. “A firefighter told me the ceiling had collapsed,” she recalls. “I said, ‘Which store?’ And he pointed to mine. I said, ‘Oh my God, that’s my store.’ ”
Inside, water had accumulated above the plaster ceiling until it gave way, falling near the cash register where employees would normally have been standing. “It looked like a tornado had come through the store,” Onuma says. “We were just very, very lucky that no one got hurt.”
Reopening proved complicated. Insurance and renovation issues slowed the process. As the closure stretched on, Onuma’s family began suggesting it might be time to close Kokoro for good.
But customers kept asking about the store. Emails and social media posts made their way to Onuma through Hubert, all asking some version of the same question: Would Kokoro reopen? “It was really overwhelming,” Onuma says.
The response from customers had a profound impact on her. “It’s what kept me going,” she says. “I felt very, very strongly that I wanted to continue in one way or another.”
Just a few doors away, Salaskar was facing her own version of the same question. “The landlords sold the building and the new owners increased the rent by a lot,” she says.
Salaskar needed to find a new home for Kimaya Kama, but hoped she wouldn’t have to leave the neighborhood. “I really did not want to move away,” she says.
As she searched for a new space, ErinRose Baldry, executive director of the Maplewood Village Alliance, suggested she reach out to Onuma.
Salaskar did, and it opened the door to the idea of sharing space. “It was literally one conversation and we knew it was going to work out,” Salaskar says. “The solution was so simple after all the stress.”
For Onuma, the timing worked in a way she hadn’t anticipated either. “Things happen for a reason,” she says. “The procrastination actually helped because by the time I was ready to get back on track, Kimaya approached me.”
Suddenly, there was a deadline. “We had to put everything on fast forward because she needed to be out of her space,” Onuma says. By mid-June 2026, Kokoro and Kimaya Kama were both operating from 172 Maplewood Ave.
Onuma admits she might not have opened the door to just anyone. “I always saw her as a very generous and kind person,” she says.
Formalities were minimal. “We almost have something similar to a handshake agreement,” Onuma says. “The contract is only two pages.”
Walk into the store today and neither business has disappeared into the other. Kokoro and Kimaya Kama maintain their own spaces, inventories, price tags and registers. “If there are times when my side of the store is open and Kokoro isn’t, I can still do the transaction,” Salaskar says. “No body is disappointed when they come in. The same works for Kokoro.”
As they’ve settled in, Onuma and Salaskar have gotten to know each other’s merchandise, too. They coordinate some of their purchases, keep an eye out for items the other might like and have found that their inventories work well side by side. “Almost everything in our stores is more complementary versus competitive in nature,” Onuma says.
Inside their shared storefront, Onuma and Salaskar have discovered another similarity: both have always stocked their stores with things they genuinely love.
“For me, my store was always a collection of my favorite items,” Salaskar says. “Susan is like that as well. If it’s something she likes and enjoys, she wants to bring it to everybody.”
Onuma sees an even stronger similarity in the way they treat people who walk through their door. “What really attracted me to Kimaya was that she has the same philosophy: the customers come first,” she says. “More than selling to the customers, although we enjoy that too, it’s really talking to the customers.”
Sometimes, their youngest customers arrive with only a few dollars in their pockets. “They come in before Mother’s Day, Father’s Day and holidays to buy a mug for mom or dad, and they’re counting their coins,” Salaskar says. “They’re like, ‘Oh, but with tax, it’s going to be so much more.’ ” Her response is often simple. “I’m like, ‘Listen, don’t worry about it. How much do you have? It’s fine.’ ”
For Salaskar, who grew up in India, those relationships carry an additional meaning. “For my husband and me, living so far away from our families, our friends, neighbors and customers have become like family,” she says. “They’ve given us that sense of belonging, of feeling at home even when you’re far from where you grew up.”
Onuma understands that pull. “If this were someplace else, I may not have reopened,” she says. “Maplewood is just such a special place.”
What began as a practical partnership has also become something more personal. Onuma describes their relationship as “very symbiotic” and “harmonious.”
Salaskar agrees. “Susan and I are alike in so many ways,” she says.
After more than three decades of owning Kokoro while continuing to practice law, Onuma has plenty of practical advice for anyone dreaming of opening a business. “Be conservative about projected revenue, expect expenses to be greater than anticipated, and have enough savings to withstand the difficult periods,” she says.
But the lesson she returns to most isn’t about a spreadsheet. “I’ve always felt that if you follow your passion, then the money will follow,” Onuma says. “If you really love what you’re doing and you do it well, then the customers will come.”
For both women, that has meant never letting the transaction become more important than the relationship. “It’s not all about the money,” Onuma says.
There is something fitting, then, about the 14-year old Kokoro customer who arrived shortly after the store reopened carrying the handmade paper flower.
After everything that brought Onuma and Salaskar to this moment, perhaps a little good luck found its way through the door after all.
“It’s been a very nice partnership,” Onuma says.
Salaskar agrees. “It just feels right.”
Amy Lynn-Cramer is a career, leadership and “let’s make sure you’re living your best life” coach with a soft spot for reinvention, unexpected next chapters and stories that remind us it’s never too late to make room for something new.
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