We recently connected with Elizabeth Loranger and have shared our conversation below.
Elizabeth, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today Risk taking is something we’re really interested in and we’d love to hear the story of a risk you’ve taken.
Ever since starting a family 5 years ago, I became very conscious about ingredients of basically everything that comes into our home. Body care, hair care, medicines, food, materials of housewares and toys, and the list goes on. I found myself obsessed with learning about all of the toxins we are in contact with in our every day lives, and how to best eliminate them as much as possible. This journey led me to not just caring about what’s in my home, but what’s best for this earth.
Rewind to when I graduated high school in 2006, and landed my first full time job working at a private optometrist’s office. I didn’t have plans to attend college, and this job provided me a way to make my own money and really helped me understand my own capabilities within the “real world”. I worked there for 7 years, and in that time I decided to pursue an optician’s license to take my knowledge and skills further. For not being a “school” person, I excelled and was on the dean’s list every semester. I was finding my passion within the healthcare industry and it felt so fulfilling. I planned my wedding in 2012 and ended up taking a semester off to free up some time to do so, because full time job & full time school was a lot (as many know all too well). I got married in 2013, and ended up never returning to school. I took a new position for a change of pace, but still within the same industry, worked there for 3 years, and then went back to a private practice for another 5 years. So if you’re adding that all up, I spent 15 years in the same field. The last few years of my career in healthcare took the passion and wind out of my sails. Between becoming a mother, and feeling less fulfilled in my own personal journey in life, I often looked down the road of life wanting to feel that fire within me again.
The pandemic hit, I was furloughed, and I remember a few months prior to the lockdown, I read an article that stuck with me. It was an article about a woman who opened a refillery store, the first one of its kind in New Jersey. I instantly had a vision of a life I felt passionate about. I felt inspired by this woman’s own risk, and wanted to take my own. I started researching and reading everything I could about sustainable shops & refillery’s across the world. I talked about it from sun up to sun down to anyone that would listen. One of those ears listened more intently than anyone else. That ear, is now my business partner. I remember the phone call I received from him that he had found the perfect shop for this dream of mine to be built. So with fear and excitement in my voice, when he asked if I was in, I said YES.
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
To overlap a little, I worked in healthcare, specifically the optical field, for 15 years. I am a mother of 2, a wife, a daughter, and a friend to many, but within the latter part of the 15 years of working in the same field, I craved more. I often referred to wanting to “get my Liz back”. I felt defined by the titles life had given to me as mom, wife, manager, etc. I felt within the depths of my soul, I needed a shift. For my mental state, for my health, and for my own personal journey. I sufferred from post partum with both of my children, and when the pandemic hit, it only heightened my lost sense of self within all these other roles. I started going to therapy and speaking with a psychologist again, and put in the work for my own health. I realized that as much as I find it important to implement sustainability on a multitude of levels within my own home, I also feel a bigger calling to provide knowledge and opportunities for others to be aware of and learn about things I was blind to for so long. As a refillery & sustainable goods shop, I want to have an answer for everyone that walks through this door. While I’m forever growing my knowledge about sustainability, I want to encourage people within my community to shop small, and to come here first before putting an item in their amazon cart, or going to walmart for more toothpaste. We have a wide selection of self care, kitchen, maternity, kids / babies, laundry, and feminine care products that have been sourced with sustainability at the forefront of the vetting process. We also have a lot of local companies, as we feel it truly is a sustainable practice to shop small, and vote with your dollar.
In the almost 10 months we have been opened, I am proud that we have a space that celebrates community and sustainability. We are ever evolving and learning what our community needs more of, or less of, and we are here for everyone, in whatever capacity they need us in.
We’d love to hear your thoughts about selling platforms like Amazon/Etsy vs selling on your own site.
We use Shopify for our website, however we made the conscious choice to only offer local pick up. We do not ship. Instead we try and guide people to their local sustainable shop. We do the leg work, and find the closest one for them, and we give them the information. We get a lot of out of towners that are only here for a short period, and express that they wished we shipped. We find it imperative to help them locate their nearest refill / sustainable shop and to stay local with their dollars. We use a resource we became apart of on instagram – Refillery Collective – to locate these shops.
Any insights you can share with us about how you built up your social media presence?
Bear Minimum didn’t start on social media as “Bear Minimum NJ”. While in our research and also location renovation phase, we decided we wanted to build a following and an interest in us, under “Sustainable Boonton”. We posted regularly and engaged with followers that we found through following local businesses, which led to surrounding towns , and so on. We walked around town, and made our faces known, but didn’t speak on too much of what the store actually would entail, to kind of create a mysterious & intriuging reveal. Social media is honestly the least fun part about the business, it’s stressful. But the Bear Minimum team does the best it can to provide meaningful content, and interact as much as we can with our community. Some weeks we get 1 post up, other weeks we post every single day. It’s more about being in our present lives, and less about the invisible cloak of social media. We know it’s an important part of our business, but we know it’s also not about top priority, and coming to that realization has allowed social media to remain fun, and an outlet for us all, rather than just another task.
Contact Info:
- Website: bearminimumnj.com
- Instagram: bearminimumnj
- Facebook: Bear Minimum