Meet the makers of our Natural Product Range

31 May 2019

DIY Vapour rub, Emu Ridge Eucalyptus oil Kangaroo Island

Do you ever wonder how things are made?

Meet Bob and Sandra …. this lovely couple used to make our range of natural products. We love the expertise and dedication that they put into creating and producing our unique range of handmade, quality, natural products!

They were pleasure to work with and were truly essential contributors to our Team and the beginnings of our Natural Product range!

In 2005, I (Bev) became allergic to perfumes and preservatives and started getting rashes from everything, things that I had used for years now gave me rashes! I started using our Emu oil and it is now one of my favourite products for my body and my face. These days Emu oil is used in many of our natural product range. We have also made some of the products Vegan so that we are keeping everyone happy. Finding new, all-natural options was very important to me, being personally driven to find better alternatives. We met Bob and Sandra in 2006 and, as they say, the rest is history. They made their own natural range, and with their expertise and dedication we worked together to produce our own unique range of handmade, quality, natural products! Sandra and Bob have since retired but their recipes live on. We now have a genuine natural product range made from scratch and we know they are all of excellent quality, they are unique to us and handmade with love!

Before we met Bob and Sandra we tried to make our natural products to the best of our ability. We couldn’t keep up with our soap making, back then it was made with tallow. Products being produced to be used on the body was a whole new set of rules compared to manufacturing Eucalyptus oil! Insurance was a nightmare and being new to this area we just started out the best we could. We bought many of our products in bulk, the companies promoted these products as natural and we just added our eucalyptus oil as the fragrance and then bottled and labelled them, I’m sure many small businesses start out like this. On researching natural products and ingredients we soon realized we were not happy at all with the ingredients in many of these so-called natural products we were buying.

These days we make our products from all of our own recipes from scratch. We know exactly what is in our ingredients. Larry, Tristan and Jude are our makers these days. Many of our products the locals purchase are refillable so to save on packaging they bring in the empty bottles to be refilled. These include our laundry liquid, insect deterrent, hand sanitiser, body wash, massage oil and of course all of our oils.

Sandra and Bob Here is a little memoir from Bob on how they started their natural product journey.

“As any successful small business, ours started out as a hobby that quickly became a passion.

We started out making natural soaps. After many failed attempts we came up with a recipe that we were happy with and we have used ever since.

After the success with our soap, Sandra decided to start making skin care but it had to be natural ingredients, this was in the 90’s before natural products became as popular as they are today. This was before Google, so many hours were spent in book shops & libraries researching recipes, ingredients, methods and the benefits of natural plant based products. Next was the hard part, trying to substitute natural ingredients for the chemicals that are widely used in mainstream skin care. A very difficult process, with many hours of trial and error until Sandra finally came up with a range of products she was happy with.

After decades being involved in retail we were set up at one of our casual leasing sites at Marion Westfield shopping centre, where we had the good fortune to meet Bev Turner (Emu Ridge). Very quickly we realised that she was as interested as we were in the making and use of natural products. This was back in 2005, since then we have worked together, developing new products and building up a very good working relationship…..and becoming good friends as well!” ~Bob~