Joanne Musgrave

I have decided to take Shop Naturally in a yummy direction during the second half of 2012, as we’ll be rapidly expanding the range of organic food we sell. The goal is to become a serious alternative to Organic Plus Erina for organic & health food grocery items.

In additon, we’ve expanded in to mineral makeup with the absolutely stunning Inika Cosmetics range. There’s a full set of testers in the showroom if you’ve like to touch and feel before purchasing.

What’s the hardest part? Having to eat all the food before we put it on the shop. It’s a rough job, but someone has to do it!

James & I went for a drive down to the south part of the coast last weekend and we took a little drive past Gnostic Corner, a cute collection of ‘hippy’ shops, as James called them After my trivia learning for the day (gnostic means knowledge through personal experience) I went and had a look in Gnostic Organics and grabbed some fresh produce and a sprouter to have a play with.

It’s a quaint little store with quite a lot on the shelf that I recognised. If lived at that end of the coast, I’d probably buy it (it’s for sale), but we’ll be setting up our own little version of this Central Coast organic food store soon enough in Tuggerah.

Talk about false advertising. I was just doing some Google rankings research (yes, I have nothing better to do at 9:30pm on a Saturday night) and was wondering how I rank for the phrase ‘natural shampoo‘ – (and sadly, not as well as I’d like) and noticed that Pantene have bought a Google ad for the phrase ‘natural hair shampoo’.

It says ‘Natural Hair Shampoo – Check Pantene’s Shampoos Find the best Shampoo for Natural Hair.

C’mon guys. Really? Everyone’s hair is NATURAL unless you’re wearing a wig. That’s how you trick stupid people in to thinking your products are natural. You know what, I don’t give a shit that they’re not. You have a whopping big market share, and congratulations on that, but do you seriously need to be tricking people in to thinking your products are natural? Shame. If they buy your products thinking they’re natural and then find out otherwise, they’re just going to be pissed off. Is the bottom line more important than your customers?

If they were natural & safe, you’d advertise the fact and put the ingredients list on your website. Want something really safe? Then choose an Organic Shampoo and Conditioner like Mukti, or take a browse through the rest of the hair products we have on offer and stay away from something you buy from the supermarket.

Quick tip, if your hair products have SLS, Sodium Lauryl Sulphate in it, it’s not natural. Nothing we sell has SLS in it.

I have just set up the ‘clean slate’ for my new blog – Organic Food Central Coast. Even though we’re selling some organic food at Shop Naturally, I have no desire to become a fully blown organic supermarket, greengrocer or butcher, so I’m going to be nice and give a free plug to all the organic butchers, fruit shops, cafes, restaurants, farmers and growers on the Central Coast that I can find.

It will be a great directory for myself and anyone else who stumbles upon it in their internet travels. While the shop will always stock stuff like coconut oil, apple cider vinegar, organic chocolate, chia seeds, goji berries, cacao powder and the like, I won’t ever be selling broccoli or steak!

If you’re strolling around looking for good fresh produce on the coast, organic or not, The Entrance Farmers Market is a good place to start. It’s on the 1st & 3rd Saturday of each month down at the Memorial Park at The Entrance.

You’d think that being a self confessed nerd, I would have been a fan of The Big Bang Theory from day 1. I’m not sure why I didn’t jump on this show when it first aired 5 years ago, but you can’t just jump in ot these things half way through, so for quite some time, I was just never interested in the show.

A few weeks ago now, I was at Coles and saw Season 1 and grabbed it. Oh my god, the show is hilarious!! It’s one of the best written comedies I’ve seen in a long time, and it’s a little scary that when they’re talking techy, I can understand most of it.

I just finished watching a couple of episodes in season 2 and noticed some product placement for one of the natural cleaning products we sell, Seventh Generation. I’ve seen it twice on TBBT now – the laundry powder (which we don’t sell) and the all purpose spray. I have also seen Seventh Generation on Desperate Housewives, Friends and a couple of other shows.

It’s nice to see natural products in product placement on TV shows. It shows a change in the tide when it comes to what kind of brands and products spend the big $ on advertising. Bring it on and slowly change the world!!

On the flip side, I was a little disappointed to see them drinking bottled water in the same episode. Now if only someone like Klean Kanteen, America’s first stainless steel water bottle manufacturer would shell out some ad dollars for a spot on a show like this too……

About f***ing time. There’s been so many complaints about websites that do daily deals, selling coupons for 50-80% off all manner of services and products that it’s finally making the news.

As you know, I run an online store, and anything that makes online retail look bad really pisses me off.

Scoopon is run by the same people who run Catch Of The Day. I’m a Catch Of The Day customer, multiple times. I only ever had one ‘bad experience’ but that was with the product not the service. I bought a crappy USB turntable that didn’t spin properly and it was just crap. I returned it. They paid the postage and gave me credit for it.

I have used Scoopon twice now. Booked accommodation with one (no trouble booking it) and also bought a meal at The Orient in Sydney. Haven’t used that one yet, but I can’t see The Orient turning people away.

The list of complaints I’ve read about Living Social is mind boggling. Just go follow them on Facebook and read away.

Remember, if a deal looks too good to be true, it probably is. These sites are a graveyard for shitty stock that doesn’t sell and businesses throwing one last ditch effort at getting customers before they close their doors. Not all offers are like this, but many are, and it takes a savvy web shopper to spot the difference.

Proceed with caution.

Read more at news.com.au

Cheeki Water Bottles

I’m so glad I have staff!!

This week we received over 800 new sports lids for the cheeki water bottles that are going to be given away free with each regular bottle, so the girls had to not only count the lids, but now we have to attach them to the bottles!!

In other news, I signed up this week as an Enjo consultant. If you want anything, just holler. I can place orders for you or do a demo in your house. That’s right, invite your friends over and watch them clean your house It’s a neat trick!!

As Dick Smith this week win the award for the best online retailer, Myer are spending $225 million dollars revamping ONE of their stores.

Myer can’t be doing it all that tough if they can afford to renovate ONE store at $225 million and still see a return on their investment. One would guess that Dick didn’t spend anywhere near that on their web site.

It’s not hard to see who the innovators are.

I’d just like to say a giant ‘sucked in’ to Colgate and Sensodyne for both spouting unrealistic crap in their TV commercials, both dobbing each other in for it and both having your ads removed from TV.

Also, a big congratulations to the two ad agencies that now get to suck oodles of money back of out them to re-make their marketing strategy. Now, if you had just told the truth the first time around ………….

Read more at news.com.au

One of the fun things about running an online store is that you get to decide what to stock, and then you just have to test everything! This is especially hard when you stock organic food (ok, not so hard!).

I’ve been eating all kinds of things, organic cookies, organic chocolate, sweet potato chips, chocolate coconut butter and more. Whoever said ‘hippy’ organic food is all bland and tasteless hasn’t taken an eating tour through my warehouse!!!

The fun now starts with using raw ingredients in cooking. I have brought home a packet of Power Super Foods Organic Coconut Palm Sugar to bake with. It has a IG rating of 35 and contains 12 amino acids, and it tastes like sugar. Woohoo!!

As my naturopath says, it’s all about substitution. You can still eat sweet foods without them being bad for you. Swap out some cane sugar with coconut palm sugar and see what happens.