Kimberly Flores spent close to 15 years in front of a camera as a news anchor and reporter. She ended her television career at ABC4 Utah as their resident environmental reporter, where she covered critical issues such as the declining health of the Great Salt Lake and the Bonneville Salt Flats. Her reporting on the salt flats earned her a Society of Professional Journalists award. Then, in 2017, she walked away from the desk.
What pulled her back toward the environment was not another assignment. It was her two young children. She told Voyage Utah, “After my children were born, my desire to be a better steward only grew.” Eventually, Flores decided she wanted to build a zero-waste business, though at first she was not sure what that would look like. An online search turned up a mobile refill station in California, built out of a van, called Refillery L.A. After a conversation with its owner, Kelly Murphy, she began researching used vans of her own.
In June 2021, armed with little more than an old florist van, Flores launched fulFILLed at the Park City Farmers Market, which she describes as “Utah’s first mobile refillery.” The idea was simple: provide plant-based cleaning and personal care products so customers could refill bottles they already owned rather than buy new plastic ones.
Within months, a local shopping center offered her a permanent storefront. Shoppers bring in their own clean bottles and fill them with laundry detergent, shampoo, conditioner, lotion, moisturizer, hand and dish soap, body wash, deodorant, or all-purpose cleaner. The shop also stocks refillable bottles for purchase, as well as a variety of plastic-free household goods, from washable cloth towels to steel safety razors and bamboo dish brushes.
The refill case for the customer is practical, but the larger problem behind it is stark. The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) found that only 9% of the world’s plastic waste is successfully recycled, with most of the rest landfilled, burned, or leaked into the environment. “It’s really up to us, the consumers, to do things differently; make different choices, better choices for our planet and our children,” Flores said.
The environmental mission has been with her since she was a child, as she explained to Park City Style Magazine, “At a very young age, I realized we’re here to help protect this. We’re all connected.” However, the model rests on a small but persuasive piece of math. fulFILLed sells refills by the ounce, so, as Flores described, “Our customers only pay for the amount of product they need—saving money and reducing plastic pollution.”
Photo Courtesy Fulfilled Lifestyle Co.
Finding the cleanest, most sustainable products to go on the shelves is the part Flores guards most closely, a habit carried over from her reporting days. The company describes, “We do the research for you, curating non-toxic, sustainable essentials that make conscious living simple, accessible, and stress-free.” Flores explained the reasoning behind this model: “Consumers are overloaded with decisions. I want fulFILLed to be a place where people who want to live more sustainable lives can come and know the work has been done.”
In addition to being as plastic-free as possible, they run every product through the Environmental Working Group, the nonprofit that researches chemical safety. Therefore, the store avoids fragrances, sodium lauryl sulfate, parabens, and phthalates. “If I won’t put it on my baby, I’m not carrying it in the shop,” she told the Park City Chamber.
Photo Courtesy Fulfilled Lifestyle Co.
Flores no longer runs the shop alone. She met Paige Garrity, who brought more than two decades of retail experience, at the store, and the two became partners in an expanded version of the brand, fulFILLed Lifestyle Co. Together, they have pushed the refill idea past the retail counter and into local businesses.
That expansion runs on grant funding. Through a Sustainable Tourism Grant, fulFILLed first helped local property-management companies swap single-use toiletries for refillable ones, then won a second grant of just over $21,000 to bring the concept to boutique hotels. The logistics are fully closed-loop: fulFILLed sources non-toxic shampoo, conditioner, and bath soap, and when a hotel runs through its five-gallon supply, the company picks up the containers, cleans them, refills them, and returns them, according to TownLift. The grant covered enough equipment for 300 dispensers, which can outfit 100 to 150 rooms, plus a dolly and a new sink to make fulFILLed’s work easier.
Photo Courtesy Fulfilled Lifestyle Co.
The shopping center where Flores opened her first storefront, the former Outlets Park City, has since reinvented itself as Junction Commons, filling its storefronts with local operators rather than national chains after the pandemic. fulFILLed stayed and grew with it. “I thought it was so ingenious of them to go towards local businesses,” Flores told TownLift, “and in particular ones that they felt brought something unique or something that was serving the public good.”
The store has become as much a gathering place as a shop, hosting everything from sustainability workshops and refill pop-ups to women’s circles that draw people who might otherwise never wander into a retail center. The proof shows up in Flores’s own sales data. fulFILLed typically sees about 60% first-time visitors during slower seasons, but this past winter, that ratio nearly flipped, to roughly 60% returning customers. “We’d like to see that we’ve created a community in our space,” Flores said. “This is a place for locals. We’re trying to say this is a community of like-minded individuals that believe in conscious consumerism and sustainability.” Likewise, fulFILLED has also formed a “local ecosystem of values-aligned businesses here in Park City” through a loyalty program that sees “Local businesses choosing each other. Choosing you. Choosing sustainability as a priority rather than an afterthought.”
At the end of the day, fulFILLED just makes life easier. Flores and Garrity, fellow “moms, entrepreneurs, and sustainability advocates,” summarized, “We know the cognitive load of trying to do it all—protecting your family, making conscious choices, and still finding time for yourself. That’s why we created fulFILLed Lifestyle Co.” Flores added, “Already, my children see less wildlife outside their door than I did as a child. Fewer birds, fewer bees, fewer little furry things. As parents, we say, ‘I would do anything for my children.’ Well… this is our chance.”
Photo Courtesy Fulfilled Lifestyle Co.
