Growing up in Riverview across the street from a landfill—“Mount Trashmore,” as she calls it—Jessica Cichowlas took a personal interest in waste reduction at an early age, coaxing her mom to recycle even before a curbside program was available.

She’s now the new owner of the relocated BYOC, where customers stock up on bulk products in refillable containers they bring or obtain on-site. She recently moved with her partner from Ypsilanti to Howell and used proceeds from selling her house to purchase the company from founder Emma Hess (Marketplace Changes, April).

A regular customer of the former location on E. Liberty, Cichowlas secured a new storefront in a plaza along the burgeoning Jackson Rd. corridor in Scio Twp. It’s 400 square feet larger and, unlike downtown, offers free parking right outside the door. She repainted the former chiropractic office and opened up the floor plan to brighten the space and make room for an expanded selection of laundry, dish, and hand soaps, dishwasher pods and powders, shampoos and body washes, and other personal care and home goods—“anything that you can use in your home to live more sustainably day to-day,” she says.

BYOC also has a shop in downtown Plymouth and in early June will launch a small pop-up outlet on the ground floor of Kerrytown Market and Shops. She’s been able to retain the business’s three part-time employees.

Cichowlas, with an undergraduate psychology degree and graduate certificate in nonprofit management, both from Eastern Michigan, most recently worked at U-M’s Center for Socially Engaged Design.

“I have all of these bits and pieces of skills, it feels like,” she says. “I’ve managed people before, know budgeting and accounting, but now the only difference is I’m the leader of it.”

BYOC Co., 25 Jackson Industrial Dr., ste. 500. (734) 709–4222. Tues.–Fri. 11 a.m.–6:30 p.m., Sat. 10 a.m.–4 p.m. Closed Sun. & Mon. byocco.com

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This article has been edited since it was published in the June 2024 Ann Arbor Observer. The town where Jessica Cichowlas grew up has been corrected.