Hard-to-describe store brings new life to the former Chicken Poop space downtown

If you enter the new Connect With Source store downtown and aren’t immediately sure how you’d describe what kind of business it is, you’re not alone.

Even founder Giovanni Von Cartier has trouble giving a quick elevator version of what he’s got.

“Experiencing community would probably be the really quick way,” he said. “It’s hard to put all this . . . into words, even into pictures or into video. It is an experience. You have to come, you have to experience, you have to feel. But our main focus is the people and community.”

Explaining what experiencing community means takes considerably more words.

The 10,000-square-foot store is where the Chicken Poop business used to be at 611 S. St. Francis, near Kellogg.

The transformed building, which opened in 1922 as a corn broom factory, is unrecognizable from its former lives.

Von Cartier and his husband, Johnathan Von Cartier, have created vignettes throughout the building, including an event space; a Himalayan salt room; a library; a chakra room; a divining parlor; a natural organic area with 240 incenses, resins and herbs; a children’s circus tent for playing; a space for a collection of oddities; a jewelry island; and a wrap-your-own-sage bar, among other things.

“Initially, it started out as, like, 1,000 square feet,” Von Cartier said. “It was a very small . . . little thing of an idea of what we were going to do. And it just kept growing and growing and becoming more and more.”

As their ideas kept expanding, so did their inventory, thanks to buying “nine businesses and four personal collections.”

“We did our research on what we thought would be a good fit, and we looked at it from a personal standpoint of, if I walked into a building, what would I want to see?” Von Cartier said. “And so we just kind of followed that and just ran with it.”

If you’re thinking the store sounds like it has a new age-feel, you’re right.

“Even if you don’t come in to purchase things, you just come in to soak up the energy,” Von Cartier said. “That’s cool too. We have a lady that comes in regularly. She’s like, ‘I’m just here for my weekly hug.’ So we’re down for that, too.”

Take the tour

At the front of Connect With Source is the pink Himalayan sea salt room on one side, where massage and yoga also are offered, and a library on the other. Customers can come sit in the space for free and read or listen to their own media or what’s in the space.

Von Cartier said people are already feeling at home there.

“We had a lady come in, and she goes, ‘Hey, I met somebody on Facebook yesterday.”

She explained she wanted to meet the person at the library within the store and have employees keep an eye on things.

”I’m coming to you because I know this is a safe space,” she said.

Along the left side of the store is what has to be Wichita’s largest moss wall with rotating props for photos, depending on the season. It can be rented for parties, and there’s an actual event space behind that.

Even though the store is large, its max capacity is 98.

A variety of retail spaces are throughout the front and rear of the store, including areas for crystals, Moldavite and other glass.

“It’s kind of like a little mining experience,” Von Cartier said.

All of the decor and permanent fixtures and furniture are what Von Cartier called “repurposed and refound.”

“Everything has a story.”

Von Cartier said the idea of the sage bar is that “energy is everything, and when you put your intentions into something, it makes it more powerful and more personal to you.”

The divining room is just behind that. It’s a quiet space for making connections, earthly or otherwise.

The chakra room next to it offers a variety of Himalayan healing bowls, including one you can stand in. The room also features aura readings.

Even the restrooms in the back of the business have themes, including one dedicated to Hogwarts and another that’s a trip to Wonderland with Alice.

Moving back toward the middle of the store, a couple of cemetery gates from New Orleans lead to a room of oddities, that’s part retail and part museum, though everything is for sale.

There’s a stuffed giraffe named Richard who is wearing a bow tie.

“So he’s a distinguished gentleman,” Von Cartier said.

The oldest piece is George “a fully articulated human skeleton from Germany, and he has been salt cured, so he still has the connective tissue holding the ribs to the sternum.”

“There is a demand for that market, for that interest, for that macabre or different,” Von Cartier said. “So we try to do things out of respect here, and be able to honor and continue these things on.”

Blessings galore

Just in case there’s not already something for everyone at Connect With Source, Von Cartier said he’s wanting to collaborate with other businesses and already has been with some nonprofits as well.

There’s a blessings box in the back of the store that’s “kind of a take-what-you-need, leave-what-you-can type of a thing. You’ll find all sorts of things in there. . . . We have books in there. Some people have put crystals. We have food, protein, drinks, cereal, all those types of things. We’ve been blessed enough to have Safe Streets Wichita provide . . . testing strips.”

There’s information about Safe Streets there as well.

Each month, the store will choose a nonprofit to donate money left at something of a prayer altar next to the blessings box.

“This is kind of dedicated to whomever, regardless . . . of what path you may walk,” Von Cartier said. “Not everyone has a space to worship or to come for a moment of prayer or manifestation or things of that nature. So we wanted to find a space within the building that would be something for everyone.”

A new business focused on so much giving back may not seem like the most cost-effective business plan, but Von Cartier is confident.

He said retail products, the event spaces and a variety of classes bring in money, “but the main thing is community.”

“That’s what it’s about. It’s about the people. And yes, yes, bills do happen. And yes, that is important to be able to pay those bills. . . . And I’m married to a banker, but you take care of your community, you take care of the people, and they want to do back. So that’s what this is.”

This story was originally published March 11, 2026 at 4:36 AM.