Sharif Store

Sharif Store is a family-owned African and Middle Eastern furniture and home-decor store on Independence Avenue in Kansas City’s Historic Northeast, run by a Somali immigrant family that has traded in the neighborhood for more than two decades.

Description

Sharif Store occupies a storefront at 2607 Independence Avenue in the Historic Northeast, within the Independence Avenue Community Improvement District. It sells African and Middle Eastern style home goods — furniture including bed frames, along with rugs, vases, wall art, lighting and kitchenware — most of it imported from suppliers in Turkey and Dubai, United Arab Emirates.¹²

The store began as a flower and perfume shop and expanded into furniture and larger home goods over time. Perfume and flowers remain part of the inventory.¹ The owners describe their buying practice as demand-led rather than catalog-driven: “Whatever customers ask for, we bring for them. Whatever is popular in the market we will bring for them,” the co-owner told the Northeast News.¹

The business is run entirely by the family. The owners and their children are the store’s only employees.¹ The name Sharif is itself a family name.²

Sharif Store is one of the Independence Avenue businesses profiled in the Northeast News “Just Around the Corner” series, produced in partnership with the Independence Avenue Community Improvement District to document everyday-goods retailers on the corridor.²

Ownership and history

Agil Leel and his wife own and operate the store.¹ The Northeast Kansas City Chamber of Commerce member directory lists the owner as “Sharif Leel.”³ Leel was active in business in Somalia, East Africa, before the family came to Kansas City in 1996.¹

The family ran the business for roughly twelve years on Lexington Avenue in the Pendleton Heights neighborhood before moving to the larger Independence Avenue storefront in 2015.¹² The store’s own website markets the business as “family owned since 1999,” which does not reconcile cleanly with the Northeast News account of a Lexington Avenue run of about twelve years ending in 2015; the earlier founding date is “ beyond the business’s own marketing copy.⁴

Links

• Website: https://www.sharifstorekc.com/

Services

Confirmed offerings, from first-party and Northeast News reporting:

• Furniture — bed frames and larger household pieces¹
• Rugs and carpets¹
• Vases, wall art, lighting and kitchenware¹²
• Perfume and fragrance¹
• Flowers¹

Goods are imported principally from Turkey and Dubai, United Arab Emirates.¹

Sources

Footnotes

1. “Somali Family Keep Northeast Residents in Multicultural Home Decor,” Northeast News, May 28, 2025. URL ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶ ↩⁷ ↩⁸ ↩⁹ ↩¹⁰ ↩¹¹ ↩¹² ↩¹³

2. “Sharif Store is ‘Just Around The Corner’,” Northeast News, October 15, 2025. URL ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵

3. “Sharif Store,” Northeast Kansas City Chamber of Commerce member directory, accessed August 26, 2026. URL ↩

4. “Contact Us,” Sharif Store (first-party website), accessed August 26, 2026. URL ↩