BY CLAIR WHITTY
Here at the Natural Health Store, we’ve had a rollercoaster of a year. Happy times and new milestones reached were sadly interwoven with several bereavements amongst ourselves and our staff. However, there is also hope amongst this sadness in the form of the birth of Natural Health Store’s first baby, a beautiful baby boy – a big congratulations to his family.
This year, Wexford welcomed the Plein Air Painting Festival, the Fleadh Cheoil, the Wexford Festival Opera and the Fringe Events in the Spiegel tent, bringing lots of new faces for us into the store. In Kilkenny, Market Cross Shopping Centre celebrated 30 years of business, and we celebrated alongside them with an Outdoor Broadcast, bringing Community Radio Kilkenny City into the Shopping Centre. With the support of many of the wholesalers that we deal with, we were able to organise fantastic prizes and giveaways throughout the year, along with fantastic sales such as our Green Friday Deals.
Training our staff on new products and keeping up with trends is always paramount and we were very busy in that regard this year. Almost every week there is new research or a new product to get to know. We had lots of in-stores, with company reps coming into the store to chat with you directly and to keep us up to date as well. These are important events as we feel that we are cutting out the middleman, giving you a chance to talk directly to experts in their given fields.
There were several products that caught the attention of customers: Celtic Sea Salt, Castor Oil, Peppermint Oil (for creepy crawly control), Shilajit, and Batana Oil to name but a few. These can be one week wonders or they can create a storm, so we must keep ourselves constantly informed. One of the interesting new products was Revive Active’s Omega 3 fish oil, the first plant-based enteric coated fish oil capsule to be launched globally. The capsule does not dissolve in the stomach, instead breaking down in the upper intestinal tract. This new technology ensures there is no fishy aftertaste, and customers have reported that they are happy with it.
Overall, 2024 was an interesting year for us and we would like to wish you all a Happy New Year for the year ahead.
