Mike Wolanin | The Republic An exterior view of Meli Market on 16th Street in Columbus, Ind., Monday, July 3, 2023.
A local couple is hoping to make Columbus a little greener, one ounce at a time.
Ellen and Taylor Forister are working to open a sustainable goods shop and refillery known as Meli Market at 1117 16th St. The couple is finishing up renovations to the space for the new venture.
The plan is to have a soft opening sometime in August, with limited hours and a limited catalog of items, said Ellen Forister. They then hope to have a grand opening and open house in the fall, possibly in October.
“We are going to have sustainable and eco-friendly home and personal care goods, both in bulk and in retail,” she said. “So what you will be able to do is come in and bring in your own clean, dry container. You’ll weigh your container when you arrive. You’ll refill whatever you need and however much you need, and then you will pay by the ounce when you leave for any of the bulk things that we will have. And we will also have some smaller retail items, like kitchen brushes that are sustainably made and sourced.”
The shop’s offerings will include personal hygiene products and household cleaners, as well as alternative versions of items that are typically made out of plastic.
She added that they are sourcing their products as locally as possible while still ensuring that all items are produced sustainably.
The couple are also using every product that will be offered at the store in their own home so they can provide guidance to customers, said Taylor Forister.
“We’re far from experts in sustainability and that, but we’re learning as we go,” he said. “And we want to try to make an impact.”
When asked about the origin of Meli Market, Ellen said that she’s been waiting for someone to open a refillery near Columbus for years. She is originally from the northeast, where such shops are more common.
“I think there’s one mobile refillery on the north side of Indianapolis, like in Carmel, but they don’t have a brick and mortar location,” she said. “So I just, after waiting so long for someone to open to one, I decided that maybe it was my place to offer that to the community. We wanted one, and we knew that we had the ability to do that, to provide that service.”
The couple plans to run the new business on top of their existing day jobs. Ellen, who is a self-employed business consultant, said that she has a flexible schedule and can work from anywhere. Taylor is an industrial engineer employed full-time by FORVIA.
“We’re doing this kind of on top of our daily duties, on top of our full-time jobs and being parents as well,” he said. “We’ve got a pretty strong support network that’s been helping us out with childcare as well as labor here at the shop.”
The 16th Street location will also be the new home of Luminosity Studio, a photography businesses that lost its downtown studio space in a devastating fire that swept through the Irwin Block Building in December.
The business, which is owned by Ambrose Schneider, will be located in a back room of the shop.
Ellen said that she and Schneider have been friends since high school, and the two of them opened Luminosity together in 2011.
“When that fire tragically happened, we thought it was a really good opportunity to be together again in this space,” she said. “And she doesn’t need a ton of room, and I don’t need a ton of room. And being two women, we feel safer being together anyway, so it’s kind of a nice — it was a serendipitous tragedy, I guess.”
When asked about the store’s name, Ellen said that “Meli” is short for the Latin word meliora — which, according to the University of Rochester, can mean “better,” “better things”, “always better” or “for the pursuit of the better.”
“We are parents of two young children,” she said. “And I think especially being a parent in this day and age, it weighs really heavily on you what environment you’re leaving to your children. And we can see directly the impact of climate change even now, and I can’t imagine what it’s going to be later in their lifetime if we don’t make a change collectively.”
