in the beginning...
Refills on the Road started life on July 31, 2019, on an 8-foot stall at Matlock Market. Here's a photo of how the stall looked on our very first day trading!
For the first couple of weeks, we stocked a small selection of 'hardware' (e.g., all the non-refillable products, like toiletries, water bottles, and produce bags). In the middle of August we received our first SESI order, and began offering refills.
We made some changes to how the stall was arranged to try to make it more visually appealing, and to make fitting into smaller spaces easier. At some markets the tables were 12ft wide, and at others only 9ft. Different set-ups for different markets soon emerged..
The refills attracted peoples' attention, and soon we started to notice people coming by regularly. It was really gratifying to see excitement from people when they discovered us, but even more exciting was seeing the number of refills we did each week start to increase..
We filled 48 bottles in the second half of August, 136 bottles in September, and more than 150 bottles in the first half of October!
On October 1, we expanded again by adding food refills.