Plenty Mercantile
Have you ever eaten the most perfectly delicious meal and then found out it was ACTUALLY healthy? That feeling of grateful surprise pretty much sums up my experience with PLENTY Mercantile. I’ve always loved their thoughtful and beautiful store, but honestly it wasn’t until just recently that I learned that conscious sustainability was the idea behind the shop from day one. I got to spend an afternoon with mother and daughter team Traci and Brittany, chatting about their vision for PLENTY Mercantile and for their hopes for the future of retail in Oklahoma City. These two are as much of a treasure to our community as their delightful shop, and I am in awe of their forward-thinking vision for sourcing and shopping responsibly in a beautiful way.
Business Name: PLENTY Mercantile
Your names: Traci Walton & Brittney Matlock
Tell us a little about you and your backgrounds:
Traci has owned her own companies in the past, volunteered for Make-A-Wish as a wish-grantor, and homeschooled three kids for four years (so she’s fearless now!) Brittney studied entrepreneurship, marketing, sustainability, and design at Oklahoma State University. We opened the store a few months after Brittney graduated from college in 2012.
What was the heart behind opening PLENTY Mercantile?
We know “sustainability” has many facets and we are each responsible for different roles in moving towards true sustainability, but we believe business has the most power and influence in this transition. There is a place and a need for regulations, non-profits, activism, and everyone in between, but the dollar is what everyone operates by and commerce is the one thing the entire globe has in common. With that core belief in mind, we choose to use our business to advance good and vote for best practices in order to increase the demand and drive down the costs of responsible production. We also want to show how we can live responsibly and support sustainable practices while not sacrificing aesthetic. In fact, responsible design often enhances regular everyday objects!
I am sure that sourcing products that are sustainable brings up a lot of challenges. How do you think that sustainability changes the way you do business as opposed to a shop that doesn’t keep that in mind?
We thought it would be difficult too, but it is actually incredibly freeing since it creates a guideline by which every product is filtered and allows us to quickly funnel options.
Well-designed products are important, so we have to first agree on the aesthetic and then we begin asking questions to see if it fits within our Purchasing Principles. Every product in the store meets at least one, usually more, of our criteria within our Purchasing Principles which include Production, Resource, Support, Packaging, and Disposal. We approach our buying with the understanding that it is all about trade-off decisions in the world of fabrication, so we choose to support and celebrate those responsible decisions being made along the way. For example, a product may be made of plastic, but made in America, so its carbon footprint is greatly reduced because it isn’t being shipped halfway around the world. Or a product may be made in China but it is 100% compostable and made of non-toxic ingredients. We will never claim any product is entirely 100% sustainable in our stores but we hope one day we can.
Where are some areas in our everyday lives that we can make a change but make a real impact?
We have found low-hanging fruit in our daily lives via the household cleaning products we use - both in the type of product and the reusability of the containers. All of our store locations now offer bulk refill stations for safe, effective, eco-friendly, household cleaning solutions such as glass cleaner, stain & odor eliminator, tub & tile cleaner, all-purpose cleaner, floor cleaner, dish soap, hand soap, and laundry soap. Using these types of products keeps chemicals from flowing down the drains and remaining in the air of our homes, and refilling empty containers greatly reduces the amount of single-use waste we produce.
If you could replace one item in every household to be more sustainable, what would it be?
Swap single-use plastic bags for reusable bags and swap single-use paper towels for Swedish dishcloths! Swedish dishcloths are reusable, biodegradable, and compostable sponge-like cloths that are thin and dry quickly! Pop it in the laundry machine, dishwasher, or get it wet and microwave it for 30 seconds to kill any bacteria before lying flat to dry.
Aside from the sustainable products that you offer, what efforts does Plenty make to uphold the integrity of your vision?
PLENTY partners with organizations and causes that use education and business to advance good throughout the world by selling their products in the store, partnering with them to host non-profit events at The Venue at PLENTY, and participating in pop-up events and philanthropic auctions.
If you had a wish list of how we as consumers could be more responsible with their shopping, what would it be?
We recently heard “Stop doing nothing because you can’t do everything” and it resonated so much with our approach to responsible consumption. There are no perfectly sustainable consumer products on the market, so our options are to do the best we can, when and where we can until those options improve due to demand.
One simple thing we’ve made a concerted effort on the last year is reducing the waste associated with buying/shopping from refusing to stock products that have unnecessary plastic packaging to cutting out single-use paper shopping bags. We’ve had some success being vocal as buyers when we choose not to stock a product due to packaging concerns and offering suggestions to help our manufacturers reduce their waste that trickles down to us and then our customers. Many of our suppliers are transitioning to less packaging or plastic-free packaging now. And then when customers bring their own bag or choose to carry their items home without a bag, it greatly reduces their shopping footprint as an individual and helps the store reduce ours as well.
The general feeling on sustainable products is that they are more expensive and harder to obtain. Can you share some thoughts on this?
The price of shopping sustainably has greatly decreased in recent years due to more and more competition and more and more demand by consumers and retailers similar to ours - and hopefully that continues to grow and become more equitable. The important thing to keep in mind is that we are paying for and supporting these product’s value and worth. Higher prices on these types of products are directly correlated with the higher costs and expenses that go into producing it - paying workers a living wage, buying quality materials and ingredients, fabricating in America, etc - all of those things cost more than standard practice of unjust working conditions and non-certified, unregulated, or synthetic ingredients or materials. It will take the masses putting their money where their mouth is to increase the demand and continue to drive down these correlated costs until they become the new standard.
What do you have in the shop right now that you are really excited about?
We’ve been so pleased with the response to our household cleaner refill stations found at all our store locations. We offer twelve different effective, safe, environmentally friendly cleaning agents you can buy per ounce to help reduce single-use waste of buying a new pre-filled (often plastic) bottle when yours runs out. We offer empty glass bottles to fill but you are welcome to bring your own up-cycled container! This is something we wished existed in the metro area so we chose to invest in it with our own stores.
How can we connect with PLENTY?
PLENTY is soon to have three metro locations: Automobile Alley in downtown Oklahoma City, Spring Creek Plaza in Edmond, and our third location on Market Street at Chisholm Creek in Oklahoma City opening Leap Day 2020.
We also would love to celebrate with you at The Venue at PLENTY which is attached to our flagship store in Oklahoma City with a Warehouse and Rooftop space available. Our new and improved website has comprehensive information on The Venue including pricing, a video tour, checklists, and now online booking. You can also shop sustainably through our new website and choose in-store pick up or curbside delivery to make shopping responsibly and local easy and efficient!
Any closing thoughts you can share with us about consuming responsibly?
This past year, we realized our seven-year-old tagline of “There’s Always PLENTY” wasn’t exactly true, and in fact, was ignorant. The truth is there won’t always be PLENTY if we don’t start making the choices and decisions to ensure there will be. So we changed our tagline to “There’s PLENTY” because there can be if we are willing to adjust our habits and walk the walk.
Thank you so much to Traci & Brittney for sharing your heart and vision behind PLENTY Mercantile!
