We were lucky to catch up with Jacqueline & Dillon Tucker recently and have shared our conversation below.
Jacqueline & Dillon, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. Let’s kick things off with your mission – what is it and what’s the story behind why it’s your mission?
Our mission is to help our community find ways to reduce waste in their daily lives. We’re a young family with a 2 year old and a 3 month old. Cutting down on waste is something we’ve been passionate about for most of our lives, but with our limited time, energy, and resources, eliminating 100% of our waste is exhausting to even think about. We feel like there are a lot of people out there like us that want to live more sustainably, but don’t want to or aren’t able to upend their entire lives to do so. With them in mind, we’ve put in the work to build a store with a welcoming atmosphere that has as wide of variety of sustainable goods as possible. Our hope is that we have something for everyone, so regardless of your lifestyle you can find something in our store that can easily fit into your routine. This mission is important to us, not only because it’s simply who we are, but we also think it is the most pragmatic approach to our society’s massive wastefulness issues. To truly make a difference in something this seemingly insurmountable, we don’t need a handful of people living zero-waste perfectly, we need millions of people living zero-waste imperfectly. What better way than trying to make a difference one small choice at a time and connecting with others to hep them do the same? Our philosophy is to celebrate whatever sustainable habits fit your lifestyle. Find joy in the choices you do make, rather than guilt in the choices you don’t. More often than not, we’ve seen that people who find success with one small change they’ve made will naturally find more and more ways to live more sustainably at their own pace. We wanted to start a business that made a positive impact on the world and in our community, and we aren’t perfect, but we’re trying our best every day and so thankful to find so many supportive neighbors and partners who share our outlook!
Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.
We are Jacqueline and Dillon Tucker. Jacqueline was born in Charlotte and after moving around most of our lives, we recently moved back to North Carolina to be closer to family and raise our kids. We’ve always talked about starting a business together, and sustainability has grown to be more and more something we’re passionate about. When we looked into moving to the Triangle, we looked for a low waste store just because we like to shop at them. Once we realized there wasn’t a store in the area quite like we were looking for we started thinking about opening up that store ourselves. After some research into the community it became clear that the area would be very open and supportive to a store like we envisioned, so things moved quickly from there. We combined elements of several existing store models to create what we feel is a pretty unique shop. We have a wide variety of recyclable, compostable, reusable, and refillable every day products for the kitchen, bath, personal care, beauty, kids, and pets in addition to locally made art & crafts. Everything is sourced from small business right here in the triangle whenever possible, but we’ll go all the way around the world if we have to to find products that fit all of our standards. There are a lot of differences between our store and most others, but the most visible one is our focus on packaging and reusability. For many of our products, you can bring your own container from home (or grab one of ours) and fill up as much as you want to save a container from ending up in the landfill. Our refillable products include soaps, shampoos, cleaners, lotions, whole bean coffee, loose leaf tea, toothpaste tablets, dishwasher detergent, laundry detergent, and more.
Some aspects we’re most proud of are our welcoming environment, our commitment to competitive pricing, our variety of products, and our effort to make sure every aspect of our store meets our sustainability standards from our lack of plastic packaging to our delivery requirements for all vendors to our in-store signage, and more. Our hope is that we’ve put in enough research and care into our products and practices so you can trust purchases from our shop.
Have you ever had to pivot?
We both pivoted very heavily just a couple years ago in pretty much all aspects of our lives. Before the birth of our first child, we were living far from any family, with our own careers in fields we enjoyed. Once our son was born, our perspective on everything changed. It became clear to us that we wanted to rebuild our lives in a way to best support our vision for our careers, lifestyles, and family. We moved to North Carolina to be closer to parents and extended family that could not only help out with our kids at times but also become role models and sources of inspiration and love for them. We decided to start a business in which we could try to make a positive impact on the world and our community. Our previous jobs were fun, but didn’t feel like they necessarily make the world a better place. Running our own company, we could also set our work environment and hours that best fit the every day life that we wanted for ourselves and our family moving forward. And choosing the business we did also allowed us to get involved more directly in our community and truly feel we were an active part of it and a positive addition to it.
Are there any books, videos, essays or other resources that have significantly impacted your management and entrepreneurial thinking and philosophy?
One of Dillon’s favorite books is The Goal by Eliyahu M. Goldratt. It’s main philosophy is that the goal of an individual or an organization should not be defined in absolute terms. A good definition of a goal is one that sets us on a path of ongoing improvement. It helped me realize the inherent success in simply continuing to exist as a business, and that focusing too much on specific numbers or output goals can distract you from what truly leads to long term sustainable success and happiness. It also helped me view my work more objectively and from the perspective of an outside consultant. It can be difficult to see something as personal as your business without bias, and this book helps you step away from that and think like an outsider would think when examining issues with your business and ways you can improve. 
Contact Info:
- Website: www.mindfulmerchantnc.com
- Instagram: @mindfulmerchantnc
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/mindfulmerchantnc/
- Yelp: https://www.yelp.com/biz/mindful-merchant-sustainable-home-goods-cary
Image Credits
Morgan Sawyer