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SOUTH COVENTRY — After years of working for other people, Laura Fleming had a dream to own her own business.
“It came to the point where I wanted to stop building someone else’s dream and build my own dream,” she said.
In 2018 Fleming, who grew up in East Coventry Township, Chester County, opened the Kangen Reading Water Store in West Reading, 402 Penn Ave., a refillable water shop that sells alkaline water produced by ionization. It was an idea she got after she began drinking the water.
In April 2022, Fleming branched out and opened a second location — Laura’s Refill Shop (a Zero Waste Store), 2235 Pottstown Pike, in the Shoppes at Pughtown in South Coventry Township, Chester County.
The new location was initially modeled on the West Reading store, just selling refillable water.
“I realized this store needed to not just be refillable water, but it needed to be refillable products,” Fleming said.
She said she is very big on people reusing things instead of throwing them in the trash and having them go to landfills.
“There are so many different ways people can become sustainable, by using refillable products, by using products that are just healthier for them,” she said.
At 1,100 square feet, the new shop had plenty of room for additional items. Before deciding what products to add, Fleming began talking with people in the community to see whether they would be interested in a zero waste store and what products they would be interested in.
There was strong interest, Fleming said, so she decided to pivot. On April 22, the updated store officially opened.
What is a zero waste store?
A zero waste refill store offers packaging-free or low-waste alternatives to traditional packaged products.
Laura’s Refill Shop offers a variety of products including soaps, shampoos and conditioners, lotions, laundry detergents, dish detergents and cleaning products that customers can put in their own refillable containers.
Fleming said there are several ways customers can get the products they need at her shop. They can bring in their own containers to fill; they can purchase a container at the store and fill it, then use it for future refills; or they can take a free container Fleming has on a shelf — a community jar give or take shelf.
“Usually, once people get one from the give and take, they’ll take it home, put their product in another container and the next time they come in they bring it back for someone else to use,” she said. “I think that’s really cool.”
Fleming’s products are priced by the ounce, so the empty container is first weighed, then weighed again after it’s filled.
“That way they are just paying for the net weight not the bottle weight, too,” Fleming said.
For someone who has never been in a refill shop, Fleming encourages them to come in and look around. She encourages people to try things, put a bit of the product on a plate so they can smell the product, see what it’s like, then go to the sink and wash their hands if they want.
A commitment to other woman-owned businesses
“My goal in this store is to have 85% of the products I am selling — whether they are through consignment or that I am getting from manufacturers — are woman owned,” she said. “That’s really important to me.”
She has six local vendors selling their products in her shop on consignment, an idea that came out of the focus groups.
Among the consignment items are essential oils, rope bowls, candles, soap, lip-gloss, loofah, market bags, and bags made from recycled items like denim and plastic bags.
In terms of national products, Fleming said she works with a woman-owned business in South Carolina that manufactures the all-purpose cleaners, lotions and conditioners she carries in the shop.
“She formulated all of her products then opened a manufacturing plant where she has a group of women help her run the plant,” she said.
The products, Fleming said, are on a closed-loop system.
“What that means is, she sends me my products in cardboard boxes with a bag inside and a pump on it,” she said, adding that once she empties several of the product bags, she returns them to the manufacturer, where the bags are sanitized and cleaned. “And they go back into production. Nothing is going into the landfills.”
A second company she works with sends product in plastic drums, which Fleming sends back to be sanitized and reused.
Getting the word out
Fleming said things have been going well since the shop opened in April, with customers posting on social media about the products. She is getting the word out through social media including Facebook, TikTok, Instagram and through word of mouth.
Starting on Sept. 25 she will be doing a fall/winter clothing swap, which will run through February, similar to an effort she did in the spring. Customers can bring clothing items into the store and trade those items for other donated items.
Fleming also wants to host classes on Sundays when the store is closed, bringing in experts to teach things like canning and composting, for example.
“To teach everyone how to be more sustainable and help our environment,” she said.
Fleming said she wants to build the business and make it a resource for the community, and plans to continue doing things to increase awareness, to get people out to enjoy the space.
Fleming shared a statistic she is proud of from the West Reading store: In the 5½ years the store has been open, members have saved 1.4 million single use plastic bottles from going into the local landfills from the Reading area. She said each bag of Kangen water is equivalent to 9½ single use plastic bottles.
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