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.

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!!

This week, Gerry Harvey announced that he didn’t expect to make any money from his Harvey Norman Big Buys, or if it did, very little. Do you want a little hint on why that is? You’re flogging cheap crap not associated with your brand and you’re trying to take on the #1 online retailer in Australia at their own game, but with inferior wares.

I actually had someone write to me this week asking if I could get a particular Lock & Lock product in stock – they’d seen it at Harvey Norman Big Buys, but wanted to shop with me instead.

I also get plenty of people wanting Thermos products that are discounted elsewhere, but our customer service is trusted and we’re a well respected brand who give to the community and are concerned about people’s health & wellbeing.

I must be doing something right ……. Gerry, do you want some pointers?

Read more ….

Wow, what a crazy January this year for Shop Naturally. Our biggest selling product, the Thermos Funtainer in 8 designs. These insulated water bottles were the #1 selling back to school product in our shop this year.

Our biggest headache? The spare parts for the Thermos water bottles!!!

You see, a couple of Thermos water bottle designs are are available at places like K-mart, Big W and the like, who have no issue buying the bottles in bulk and selling them about $6 cheaper than I possibly can – but on the flip side, don’t seem to care at all about after sales service and don’t stock the spare parts.

Thermos have a really limited supply of these spare parts, and it’s virtually impossible to get a hold of any stock. When we do, people have been snapping it up quickly who did not buy the bottles from us, and several have complained about our minimum $7.95 shipping fee while doing so, more than one being quite rude about it.

Because of this, we only sell Thermos Funtainer Replacement Parts to people who made the original bottle purchase with us. This way, they’re reserved for our own customers who can purchase the replacement lids & straws with other items next time they shop with us.

A polite word to those who not so politely complained about our shipping  charges:-

• Our shipping charges are not designed to cater to people who want to spend $3.95 with us.
• No, we can’t just run down to the post office to save you $6. I have to pay staff to do that. We don’t EVER walk in to a post office to do anything. A big red van pulls up each day and they come in to our warehouse and drag out the piles of canvas sacks holding the satchel orders and pile the boxes on a trolley.
• EVERY PARCEL we send out goes through eParcel with tracking & insurance. We do not change our shipping policy to try and save a dollar or two here and there. It wastes time and money. We’re not an eBay seller. We send out hundreds of parcels a week. We have an automated system, and it works.
• Our eParcel account has a minimum charge of $7.95 for ANYTHING under 500g, even something that weighs 20 grams.

We have a system in place that works, and we don’t alter it because you saved $6 on your bottle at K-mart and now you need a replacement part and you don’t want to buy anything else from us. May I suggest you go back to the original place of purchase and ask them why they’re not interested in offering you any kind of after sales support? Sadly, we’re not equipped with enough stock to service our own customers plus those of two of the largest retailers in the country. We have a water bottle supply and spare parts supply for our customers only, and sometimes we don’t have enough spares for that.

Big thank you to the folks at Invisible Zinc for allowing me to stock their product. After picking up some Invisible Zinc at the chemist last week and lathering myself from head to toe with it on the weekend, I can very easily tell you that it is THE BEST natural sunscreen I have ever used.

Check out the official Invisible Zinc website to check out the range. My faves are the 4 hr water resistant and the tinted moisturiser for every day use. There’s no nano-particles, it’s micronised. It can leave you looking a little pale & pasty looking when you put it on, but seriously, if you’re out in the sun and you’re not getting burnt, who gives a shit? If you’re concerned about a pasty face, the tinted moisturiser is fab. You just can’t wear it in the water as it’s not water resistant.

Run to the chemist to buy a tube or wait a couple of weeks and you can buy it from my shop.

We’re just started stocking the most gorgeous reusable shopping bags on the market, from Envirosax. They’re large, strong (up to 20kg) and fashionable, so they can double as a shoulder bag for going to the beach, or anywhere.

We’re adding their kids range of bags too which are just too gorgeous for words and can double as school library bags. Some of them even have matching drink bottles to go with them. Watch this space for more details as we add the entire range.

Well, not quite literally. It would be quite the amazing feat if they grew little legs and ran off out the front door of our warehouse, but I cannot believe how many Klean Kanteen water bottles we’ve sold at Shop Naturally in the past 48 hours. I’m still trying to find out if they were in the paper on the weekend or on telly or something. We’ve sold over 80 of them in 2 days, and this is on top of us selling over 600 Cheeki bottles in 24 hours last week when we had a sale on after the Today Tonight story a week or two ago.

Gotta love the warmer weather. Everyone wants a drink bottle!!!!

We do have a special treat for those who don’t like drinking out of plastic or stainless steel bottles. Lifefactory have just released their Glass Beverage Bottle in Australia. It’s like a giant version of the baby bottles, with a silicone cover, except this one has a wide mouth screw lid and it takes 650ml of liquid. You can buy the Lifefactory glass water bottle from Shop Naturally, of course! Why else would I mention it.

You know what, now that I’ve said that, I’m going to give a bottle a plug that I don’t sell. Seriously!! Have you seen the Water Bobble? It looks and feels like a curvy soft drink bottle (quite light and squeezy) and it has a water filter built in. It’s BPA Free, so it’s safe too. I saw them at Robin’s Kitchen, I’m not sure who else stocks them yet. I haven’t bought one yet, but I’ll probably check it out to see what the quality of the water is like once it goes through the filter.