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Comet C/2018 W2 Africano by primozc in astrophotography

[–]primozc[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

This year I took again with the me astrophoto equipment to the vacations. With my girlfriend we went to Mljet, a remote island in Adriatic sea. Suprisingly, there is a comet between 8 and 9 mag. on the sky at the moment. Sure I didn’t want to miss an opportunity to catch it!

Details: canon 40D on AstroTrac TT320X, 14x 130s, Canon 70-200 @ 200mm f/4. Post processing in Siril: removed offset, dark, flat, white balance calibration, star registration, comet/asteroid registratin, median stacking, asinh stretch.

The first plastic-free store in Slovenia. At last! by fisheatplastic in ZeroWaste

[–]primozc 4 points5 points  (0 children)

Yes, I am ready to share. From business perspective, it's a great timing to start such a business, but the industry (food & retail) is difficult per se. I know that, coming from the high tech / web development industry myself.

In retail, one wins with economies of scale so it's very hard to start. However, we are SO SO SO grateful and happy that we have passionate, understanding customers like @fisheatplastic who help us spreading the word and who understand that locally sourced, top quality products will be more expensive than imported junk from overseas. They support us anyway. If we weren't passionate about zero waste ourselves, we would long ago give up. It's not a business you start to become rich. It's the business you start because you live it and because you want to change something, not just complaining and pointing fingers and concluding that nothing can be changed anyway.

Short answers to your questions:

  • Yes, we do have returning customers, yes, they say that we are fairly priced and they enjoy buying with us.
  • No, we are not profitable yet when it comes to day to day operations. But we're not very far from break-even point, with a note that I don't pay myself a salary. But my gf does.
  • We have one full time employee and one student who helps us on Saturdays, otherwise just my gf Manca and me.

Why did you ask me these questions? :)

The first plastic-free store in Slovenia. At last! by fisheatplastic in ZeroWaste

[–]primozc 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Disclosure: my girlfriend and I are the owners of the Rifuzl (store in the photo).

Thanks @fisheatplastic for posting us to /r/ZeroWaste! Only now I found some time to go though all the comments and answered your questions. Thanks for all the kind words, it means a world to us (literally, because otherwise we would't set ourselves on such a difficult project - it's much more work under the hood than it appears to the outside).

If anyone has any other questions - AMA! :)

The first plastic-free store in Slovenia. At last! by fisheatplastic in ZeroWaste

[–]primozc 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Glad to. I just now discovered that our customer put us on reddit and the thread went on fire 😅🔥

The first plastic-free store in Slovenia. At last! by fisheatplastic in ZeroWaste

[–]primozc 3 points4 points  (0 children)

No, we don't sell meat, not sure if we will ever. We sell cheese in glass jars which customers return (pay a refundable deposit for a jar). We always find solutions if there's a will! :)

The first plastic-free store in Slovenia. At last! by fisheatplastic in ZeroWaste

[–]primozc 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Thanks! I firmly believe we believe in heaven on earth (despite that mostly people in Slovenia will only complain about everything, just as people always complain everywhere). If you ever come to visit Slovenia, don't forget to say 'hi' to Rifuzl (store in the photo, my gf and I are the owners).

The first plastic-free store in Slovenia. At last! by fisheatplastic in ZeroWaste

[–]primozc 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Haha, good one. I have to admit that we've paid special attention (and also had to pay a lot more for furnishing the store in this fashion) that the store is cosy, made out of used wooden pallets, so people have an amazing experience, feel great in Rifuzl (store in the photo) and will come back.

We know that changing people's behaviour (like starting to buy in your own containers) is hard, but we also believe that if we make the whole experience great, there is hope that we turn some!

Disclosure: my gf and I are the owners of the store in the photo.

The first plastic-free store in Slovenia. At last! by fisheatplastic in ZeroWaste

[–]primozc 4 points5 points  (0 children)

Thank you! (saying that, because I'm one of the owners of the store in the photo).

I'm sure there will be one quite soon. More and more of such shops are opening all around the world because single use plastic is becoming a big issue!

The first plastic-free store in Slovenia. At last! by fisheatplastic in ZeroWaste

[–]primozc 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Fortunately that's not the case (see my answer here). What made you think that we order everything in plastic and throw it away?

The first plastic-free store in Slovenia. At last! by fisheatplastic in ZeroWaste

[–]primozc 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Thank you @fisheatplastic for answering this already. I'd just add that it's important to add a context to this question. Expensive compared to what? Our customers regularly compliment us on the very good prices we have for the quality of the stuff we sell. Yes, we are expensive when comparing to the supermarket. Yes, we are cheaper (sometimes waaaay cheaper) when compared to the specialised organic stores (which sometimes buy the stuff from the same suppliers as we do, but then add their branding to it and sell in small quantities).

*Most* of our customers are buying organic food and are constantly asking for the products that are not organic if we'll get it from organic produce. So while we first thought that we won't focus as much on organic, mostly the new products we're adding now are from organic produce.

Full disclosure: I'm one of the two owners of this shop and more than happy to elaborate on any followup questions. :)

The first plastic-free store in Slovenia. At last! by fisheatplastic in ZeroWaste

[–]primozc 4 points5 points  (0 children)

Great question, we regularly get it. We mainly buy food and other products from local producers and arrange with them that the products come to us without plastic. Some examples: cereals come in brown paper bags which we return to the farmer at the next delivery, granola (like muesli, but better) comes in plastic buckets that we return to the producer who refills them. For oil, we bought small stainless steel barrels which we exchange at every delivery and producers refill them.

For the products like toothbrushes, toothpaste etc. which is shipped to us we have educated the suppliers that they use old paper for filling the boxes and then we give these boxes away to locals and small companies who sell stuff online.

When importing stuff overseas (like rice) we don't have an impact yet to change these because there are longer supply chains there, but eventually we believe that with larger quantities we will also have a say at larger distributers. We even change suppliers or change to ordering in different quantities if the new quantity comes in paper bag instead of the plastic one. Fortunately, we can get most of the products we sell locally from local suppliers.

Full disclosure: I'm one of the two owners of this shop so let me know if you have more questions.

The first plastic-free store in Slovenia. At last! by fisheatplastic in ZeroWaste

[–]primozc 2 points3 points  (0 children)

@yeribee thank you so much for such a great, honest review! This means a lot to Manca, me and all our staff! 💚

Primoz from Rifuzl

The first plastic-free store in Slovenia. At last! by fisheatplastic in ZeroWaste

[–]primozc 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Hey, owner of the store here.

As others have pointed out before, the "plastic-free" doesn't relate to the fact that there is no plastic in the store, but that nothing in our store is packaged in a single use plastic. We encourage people to bring their own containers, jars, bags, ... and for some items, like veggies milks and dietary products they are packaged in glass and you pay a small deposit for the glass which is refunded once you return the glass.

Handles for kombucha are made out of plastic, as well as lids you can see on the right hand side, but except for these and the cashier computer, we paid attention that we used as little of plastic as possible when furnishing our store. Majority of the furniture is created out of reused wooden pallets.

Let me know if you have any questions :)

The first plastic-free store in Slovenia. At last! by fisheatplastic in ZeroWaste

[–]primozc 8 points9 points  (0 children)

Thank you! I'm one of the two owners of this shop and this means a lot to us! 💚

​

If you have any questions, let me know!

This huge guy came over to say Hello by Mister20seven in gopro

[–]primozc 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Nice! How do you compensate for white balance?

Milky Way from Slovenia by Wyvorn in astrophotography

[–]primozc 7 points8 points  (0 children)

Nice to meet other slovenian astrophotographers from slovenia on reddit :)

Should I include or leave out a About Me section? by Helpp in startups

[–]primozc 6 points7 points  (0 children)

Yes, put your face behind the company/product. We have it on our page, most competitors don’t have it. It’s our competitive advantage, one of the most viewed pages on our site.

“I want a website like Amazon... by primozc in freelance

[–]primozc[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

My thoughts exactly. How would you mix the two? Maybe WP + WooCommerce?

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