On Saturday, September 29, 2018, Västerbottenssåpa's warehouse store in Volgsjöstrand in Vilhelmina was inaugurated. The company manufactures soap and has conducted e-commerce for a couple of years, and now the warehouse has moved into new premises, the former workers' cottage in Vilhelmina. In connection with this, they are also taking the opportunity to open the warehouse to physical customers and create a warehouse shop. The warehouse shop will be open on Thursdays and Fridays from 12:00-16:00. Online shopping continues as usual every day, around the clock.
In the warehouse shop, you will find pretty much the same things as in the webshop. The shop also has some products that are not available in the webshop because they are a little too large to be easily sent by post. The range spans from soap and other environmentally friendly cleaning products to organic teas, chocolate, and hygiene products, as a result of collaborations with local creators and producers.
During the inauguration, coffee and seven kinds of homemade cookies were offered. The interest was great, and they estimate having had nearly six hundred visitors during the inauguration day.
The company actively builds collaborations with local producers who also work with environmental issues. Examples of collaboration partners are Vintage Plantations and Eljest in Umeå, Äkta Norrländskt in Dorotea, Naturlig Deo in Norsjö, Budhas kafferosteri in Lycksele, and Malin i Ratan's organic soaps. We do this because we believe in our part of the country as a growth region instead of a depopulation area. We are convinced that e-commerce will grow and be able to create jobs in the inland, and there we will make sure to lift and help each other forward. There are many of us here who are doing good things, and together we can reach a larger customer base.
In connection with the warehouse move, the company has hired a person for packaging and order handling and is now looking forward to being able to scale up a little more as the Christmas shopping season starts.