How many years have you been in business in the DDBIA?

2

How many full-time employees (including yourself) work in your business or org?

3

Are your annual sales [budget] over or under $500K yearly?

Over

What do you believe makes your business or org uniquely successful?

We are focused on creating community.  Our return customer rate hovers around 90%, our company culture attracts the most amazing and loyal employees and our recycling and community initiatives bring people together.

Regardless of how you define growth, what are the short- and long-term growth plans for your business?

Our immediate goal is to make the business run as efficiently as possible with the long-term vision of expansion in the form of additional locations or mobile services.

What new products or processes or other actions have you taken in the past to address changing market conditions, customer expectations and or growth opportunities.

We just recently pivoted our direction in the store as a result of sales statistics and local market shifts.  Since the beginning, we had planned on adding bulk food to our offering, but with the recent upgrades to The Bulk Barn and The Community Farm Store, we felt that this area was being serviced better than we could do in our existing space.  At the same time we noticed an increase in sales in what we refer to as the "DIY" products (raw ingredients for making lotions, potions, salves, soaps....s). As a result, we recently launched what we call The Maker's Apothecary, which is a space for people to come together to create, learn and share.  We're really excited about it, and the feedback so far has been

amazing!

How specifically do you operationalize the idea of “Excellence” in your business?

We believe that business is much more than what happens inside our space.  We strive to contribute to our community in ways well beyond commerce and we make that very clear in our company culture and branding.  We are proud to be a fierce advocate for inclusive employment. We encourage community involvement with paid volunteer time each month for all of our staff. We work with external organizations to educate and reduce consumer waste via reuse and recycling.  We organize local street and beach clean-ups.  And lastly, we are a retail store... that's just what makes all the other stuff possible.