Why Natural – Do You Know?
I had a very illuminating conversation with a group of women a little while ago that I thought you may find interesting, especially if you are selling natural skin care products.
It was a group of home business owners and we were telling each other what we do.
3 out of 4 of them wanted to know why they would want to use natural products over ’store bought synthetics’.
There was mention that they did ‘kind of know’ that it’s probably a better choice, but really seemed to need it made clearer to them exactly why they would want to choose natural.
I have to tell you this really knocked my socks off. I had really always had such a strong pull to natural myself that I just assumed that everybody else could see the sense in it – naturally. Mistake number one!
I know obviously that it doesn’t mean everyone uses or even supports the natural ingredients industry but I had no idea the number who needed and even wanted for their own benefit and that of their family to know why.
If you are selling natural, it’s a really good idea to have some information about it. People want to know.
If you are buying skin care products and wondering why natural, off the top of my head I say good health and clean environment.
Maybe most important – preserving the planet that sustains us for our children and all of those who will come after. That’s not a choice, it’s our duty as adults and fellow citizens in this place we all live together on and goes far beyond which is a better wrinkle cream.
I will expand on each of those on this blog, but I’d love to hear what your reasons are.
Are they the same? Are they different?
Maybe putting our heads together and having a discussion about it may help to give a better answer the next time someone asks you – why natural?
Nov 29, 2009
This is something I often assume people already “get” too, so I tend to leave a lot of things unsaid. I’m trying to find the right balance between marketing intelligently and not being tiresome, but I think I could definitely work on explaining why I choose the ingredients I do.
Thanks for the reminder, Jan. I hope other people chime in on this.
(p.s. – I bought a large order of organic cocoa butter from you a while ago. It’s wonderful.)
Nov 29, 2009
Hiya Jan,
I too have friends that I know are happy using the store bought synthetic products and don’t see how important natural is. Until a few years ago I admit I didn’t see buying natural products as a necessity, I just thought if it does the job there’s no need to worry much about what’s in it. But I am SO Glad I starting reading about what those ingredients in mostly synthetic products are, and how damaging they can be. That added to the fact that natural products feel, smell and work much better I think, as well as giving you more of a sense of well being, but I don’t think I realised that until I started using them regularly.
I have changed nearly all the products I use for beauty, household etc. to ones with more natural ingredients and like you said I do have a more environmentally kinder holistic feeling, knowing they are more biodegradable and kinder to the environment, as well as to family health. I think making them as well yourself, even really simple ones like green tea toner makes you realise that simple natural ingredients can work as well, and you don’t need ones full of complicated chemical ingredients. I have made some natural products for friends, and they do love them but I think perhaps they are so used to buying the mass marketed products, as well as the fact they are cheaper, and they haven’t read about the dangers of some of the chemicals in them, although I’ve briefly talked about those.
I think as well, in the case of household products at least, they don’t trust natural products such as essential oils etc to disinfect well enough, I think because adverts scare us into thinking unless we use their product with loads of anti bacterial chemicals the house won’t be clean enough. I think beauty products advertised on the tv sometimes do the same thing, making us feel we need their products to fight wrinkles, have silky bouncy hair etc.
Hope this isn’t too long a comment, I thought your article was really interesting and sure it will reasonate with a lot of readers!
With Best Wishes,
Brigid Holmes UK
Nov 29, 2009
Hi Jan,
Thought you might like to share with people the web site that they can check about the products they are using. It is http://www.safecosmetics.org You can put in any product and see what the scoring is. It is a great site to tell people about who don’t know why they should use natural products.