Exploring Life & Business with Dillon & Jacqueline Tucker of Mindful Merchant

Today we’d like to introduce you to Dillon & Jacqueline Tucker.

Dillon & Jacqueline, we appreciate you taking the time to share your story with us today. Where does your story begin?
Jacqueline was born in Charlotte and raised mostly in Pennsylvania, Dillon is from Texas. We met in California, and after moving around quite a bit, we moved back to NC to be closer to family, raise our kids, and start this business.

Throughout our lives, we’ve continued to slowly build low waste habits into our lifestyle and frequent low waste stores in our previous home cities. When we decided to move to the triangle, we found that there wasn’t a store quite like what we were hoping for, and we also found a community that was more than ready for one.

Alright, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall, and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
Alongside starting this business, we’re also raising our very energetic 21-month-old son. We’re the only Mindful Merchant employees at this time, so the challenges of raising our son while starting the business have made any obstacles we’ve encountered at the store seem like a walk in the park! We’ve also received tremendous support from the community that has helped guide us in evolving the store as well.

From speaking with owners of other stores from other states, we realize how fortunate we are to be in an area like the triangle with so many people who share our values and so many wonderful vendors who create products that share our mission.

Appreciate you sharing that. What should we know about Mindful Merchant?
Mindful Merchant is a sustainable general store: we offer a wide variety of package-free, reusable, local, and natural home goods and everyday essentials. It is our mission to help our community reduce its single-use plastic waste.

We know everyone’s lifestyle is different, so we aim to offer a way for anyone to make simple changes that can have a big impact. We think our store is set apart by the wide variety of high-quality products that we carry, and we are most proud to have created an environment that is welcoming to anyone, regardless of their background and how familiar they are with low waste methods. We truly believe that we offer products that anyone can effortlessly fit into their lifestyle. We are also proud of the work we put into selecting our inventory.

We scour the globe for partners that share our values but prefer to work with someone from right in our backyard as much as possible. Fortunately, North Carolina has some of the best bulk vendors in the nation, like Fillaree in Durham, who you can find in stores across the country, but are right down the street from us!

What’s next?
We plan to carefully, and selectively grow in every direction. We will soon hire our first outside employees, and are excited about the new ideas they can bring to our business. We have slowly but surely continued to expand our inventory based on customer feedback, and will continue to grow our selection.

We also are excited to grow the materials we accept for recycling and donations as well. Finally, we are also looking forward to partnering with other local organizations and businesses to better connect with and understand the needs of our community.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.mindfulmerchantnc.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/mindfulmerchantnc/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/mindfulmerchantnc

Image Credits
Headshot photographed by Sandi D’Arezzo