When Monique Bonner turned 50 in 2020, she decided to leave the world of technology marketing, where she'd worked for 20 years at Dell and other major companies, and do something she'd always dreamed of: start a home-goods store. But the pandemic was raging at the time, so the Middlebury College alum launched her shop online. She named it Addison West to honor where she lived: on West Street in the Addison County town of Cornwall. Since then, Addison West has grown considerably. It now occupies a small retail space in Middlebury's historic Stone Mill and a wonderfully rambling, 5,000-square-foot one on Main Street in Waitsfield. The latter is an 1834 building previously occupied for 35 years by the Store, a kitchen-supply emporium. It also houses Addison West's recently launched design services. Packing and shipping for online sales — now 30 percent of the business — take place in the basement. Bonner led Nest through the Waitsfield store just as the holiday season was peaking, making it difficult for this reporter to separate work from gift shopping. Addison West aspires to be the area's destination for gift finding, and it does not disappoint. Shoppers can swing by minutes before a dinner party for an artful bouquet and a bottle of bubbly from the well-stocked wine fridge. Or they can browse themed sections of the store that Bonner calls "vignettes": areas focused on gardening, cooking, fishing, pickleball and more. The tour began in "the pit," a slightly sunken area to the right of the entrance where grain was dumped when the building served as a farm-supply store. The pit offers gifts that men didn't know they wanted: a leather punching bag hanging from a chain; Liberty puzzles, distinctive for their laser-cut wood pieces; Kalastyle's wood-scented soaps with an ax on the packaging; shearling slippers from France. Actually, I wanted those slippers, too; the pit's masculine theme is just a suggestion. After all, the whole crew at Addison West is female, including lead designer Bibiana De Souza, Waitsfield store manager Anna Mays, operations manager Maxine Eaton, and brand and digital director Elisabeth Waller, who shadowed our tour taking photos for the company's Instagram account. Everyone multitasks. De Souza packages up online orders, for instance, and Mays creates the bouquets and organizes events for customers. De Souza is from Brazil. Bonner, whose mother is French, lived in Ireland for seven years…