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Where would you expect to find the second largest organic cotton retail store in the U.S.--maybe Berkeley, Boulder, or Austin? What about a store that truly offered pure natural cosmetics made with loving, labor-intensive practices--5th Avenue? Green Acres it isn't, but probably nowhere other than Fairfield does the insatiable appetite for the natural, the organic, and the pure take on such passionate and obsessive proportions. Natural Selections along with other Fairfield specialty stores have established some very unique niches in the attempt to meet these appetites.
Natural Selections' evolution began when Maharishi University of Management students Lonica Kufner and Michael Halley got involved with the school's environmental group and Eco-jam four years ago. From the group's fund-raising fashion show, Kufner went on to selling clothes at a town fair. "I used one week's paycheck from the job I was working to hold the fair," she says. From those experiences and nine months of research finding organic clothing suppliers, she and Halley launched their business two years ago.
The Fit to Survive
Natural Selections' specialty is organic fibers, and mostly Certified Organic Cotton, which means it's known to be of non-genetically engineered origins. "Once we found the largest manufacturer of organic clothing, we had to search out the companies that made specialty items like socks, shirts, and dresses. They're such cottage industries that you have to find them by word of mouth," Kufner says. "Bedding is manufactured here in Fairfield, so our prices on those items are the best in the U.S."
What the major organic clothing manufacturers can't believe is the level of manufacturing being done in Fairfield and the sales that this store is generating. "We're the second largest organic cotton retailer in the U.S," Halley says, "and at the last trade show we went to, manufacturers couldn't believe what we had grossed our first year." This, after all, is Iowa, and the local market for the kind of items Natural Selections sells is probably only about 3,000 people, plus some attention from the major metro areas within a five-hour radius. "We did an inexpensive catalog for customers that inquire, and our prices attract because normally organic cotton sells for twice what we sell it," Halley explains.
The large organic manufacturers are aware of the kind of community that exists here. They know of the university and the role it plays in directing people's lives in a direction more in accord with nature, and executives of the nation's largest organic clothing manufacturers practice the Transcendental Meditation technique. Fairfield's number two distribution status still competes with larger metropolitan stores. The largest U.S. retail seller of organic clothing is actually the combined sales of two stores in the Los Angeles area. There isn't much similarity in the way those stores do business and the approach that Natural Selection takes. The L.A. stores mix their organic selections with other clothing. Natural Selections thinks more in terms of its Eco-jam beginnings and the impact of the clothing industry on the environment.
Conventional U.S. fiber production is treated with formaldehyde and has heavy metals. Even natural, 100 percent cotton can be grown with herbicides and pesticides that pollute the water, the plant, and its fiber. In fact, cotton is often grown with toxic chemicals that are too strong for food production, and garments produced with these fibers can have dioxin and carcinogens that can enter your body through your skin. To have fibers Certified Organic requires government soil samples and special handling practices, but besides the benefits to individual health and the environment, organic clothing lasts longer and breathes better.
These kinds of organic clothing benefits are why Natural Selections has doubled its inventory and physical space in one year, and why Maharishi School students will be getting organic cotton uniforms.
"This kind of store probably wouldn't work anywhere else besides Fairfield, but we do think of franchising and look at other location possibilities," the store owners confide. "We have a special niche and don't like to duplicate products that are being sold elsewhere in town."
"Mom and Pop" Cosmetics
Another Fairfield specialty store with its roots in what touches the skin is The Helena Meyer Company. Austrian Helena Meyer came to Fairfield to take the university core courses and improve her English, intending to leave behind her career in cosmetics. Schooled in cosmetics in Paris and aromatherapy in Germany, she was the highest profile skin care professional in the state of Florida, having opened two cosmetic teaching institutes there. "I gave it up and never wanted to do anything with cosmetics again because cosmetics didn't do what they promised," she says. "I agreed with the line from the movie Quiz Show--the three most corrupt industries are pharmaceutical, TV, and cosmetics.'"
In Fairfield, Lenora Boyle kept asking her about herbs for skin care, and she began to remember things about herbs that she had heard from both sides of her family, where doctors and naturopaths were plentiful. Boyle got some friends together and Meyer taught a class. That got her started creating skin preparations on her own. "It was 1986 when I began making skin care products. I started using the most natural and purest herbs. When I talked to cosmetic companies about the herbs they used, they would often tell me that the herbs had no purpose at all other than they look good on a label," she says. Her experience was different, and that created her special niche.
Everything she sells is handmade and natural. Her husband, Bob, enjoys doing the mixing, and Helena attributes his love of the work to adding bliss to the products. Theirs is truly a "mom and pop" operation. Mass producers cannot afford either their labor-intensive production techniques or the natural ingredients they use. In nearly all conventional skin products, an ingredient like coconut oil is not natural but synthesized, and the products use preservatives to increase shelf life. "I have had two offers to do TV infomercials and franchise my products, but my unique position prevents me from getting very big," Meyer says. "I would have to change my manufacturing principles, and I can't make myself do that."
Her store does do mail order all over the world, though, and according to Meyer is the only store in the U.S. that has purely natural cosmetics, with customized products based on individual needs. If there is a possibility for growth, it is in the area of training.
When she began again in 1986, she asked import companies about aroma oils. The biggest companies didn't know anything about aromatherapy, but now it is a household word. Helena feels that her education in Germany and Paris and teaching experience will serve her well in doing what she wants to do--train skin care specialists. She is starting an organization in Fairfield called Bio-synergetics International which may result in seeing "mom and pop" cosmetic operations elsewhere.
Providing Natural Self-Help
Education is also an important ingredient of Thymely Solutions, whose angle is to provide the tools for self-education.
"I would say that empowering people to take care of their own health is the mission statement of Thymely Solutions," says owner Pamela Slowick Karll. "I was in Baltimore when I saw a pharmacist typing into a computer the complaints and symptoms that a customer was describing." The computer printed out the homeopathic remedy for that complaint. "I wanted to put the power of that computer programming in the hands of the customer, and ultimately empower them in a way that also lets them follow their own intuition," she says.
That's what she makes available to her customers. People like having the computer knowledge available and a corner of the store devoted to a reference library complete with comfortable chairs that invite a customer to sit and read. Everything is easily available. People love the feel of the store.
When a customer decides on some timely solution, they are already among a whole host of homeopathic remedies, wild crafted and organic herbal remedies, aromatherapies, flower essences, and personal care items. "Our whole intention is to provide the highest quality products and embellish them with gift items, and do it in an environment that people love to be in," Karll says.
Thymely Solutions opened in August of 1995, and already Karll is opening a new store just outside La Jolla, California, and making the business available on the Internet. Like Helena Meyer and Natural Selections, Thymely Solutions supports local cottage industries. Amrita is a local brand of herbal products that they supply. "Anything locally produced that goes with the theme, quality, and feel of the store we will carry," Karll says.
These three stores, their remarkable accomplishments and special niches, reflect only the tip of the iceberg of Fairfield's passion for purity. The town supports an organic grocer, a health store, a sweets store, a toy store, jewelry and gift stores, a Maharishi Ayurvedic product store, a host of health-oriented restaurants, and other clothing stores that all have roots in the theme of natural.
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