10 Sep

plucky tree store shutting down

I’ve shut down the store that shares its name with this blog. To make a very long story short, I had a two-year cat-and-mouse game with my largest supplier, Ecolution, and their continued lack of organizational skills made it impossible to provide good service to my customers.

I’d like to provide a list of alternative ways to get the products we sold on the site over the years:

  • BioBag (compostable waste bags): List of retail and online shops
  • Citra-Solv (cleaning products, soaps, detergents): Find a local store or online shop
  • Dr Bronner (soaps, lotions, hair care, balms): Order direct from Dr Bronner
  • Eco Bags (small organic cotton produce bags): Order direct from Eco Bags
  • Eco-Dent (dental floss, mouthwash): List of retail and online shops, also sell direct
  • Ecolution (hemp fabric products of all kinds): You can buy directly from their exclusive distributor, Bean Products. NOTE: They can be very slow and difficult to work with, but they are the only supplier of these great products.
  • Ecover (detergents): Store locator
  • From the Field (natural pet toys): Store locator
  • Glass Dharma (reusable glass drinking straws): Where to buy
  • Green Field Paper (tree-free paper products): Buy direct
  • Serf to Surf (body balms): Buy direct
  • Twist (cleaning sponges): Where to buy
  • Weleda (toothpaste): Available at select health food stores - no list provided

These companies make excellent products and we enjoyed a great relationship with all of them. They really are the cream of the crop and worth any extra time you may have to spend to obtain them.

The reason we started the store was to collect some of these great products that were hard to find or sold by merchants who provided a very poor customer experience.
Some general words of advice (and perhaps even wisdom!):

  • Support your local independently-owned retailers. If they don’t carry these great products, convince them!
  • When buying online, try to buy direct from the manufacturer to allow them to benefit more from your purchase.
  • Buy in bulk to save on shipping.
  • Avoid chain stores such as Whole Foods that wield too much power over specialty merchants and later squeeze them out with their own private label brand. Also, if you want to live in a world that is full of variety, support that by spending your money accordingly.