Wildcrafted Cottage - Kurrajong Now Open

Wildcrafted Herbal Products Pty Ltd. has opened its first retail store, in Kurrajong Village, NSW, where its full range of natural skin care products is now available and on display.

Wildcrafted Cottage – Kurrajong, is the brand new retail outlet for Wildcrafted’s full range of skin, body and personal care products. “We wanted to make all our products available in one place so customers could come into our shop, sample the products, and ask questions directly from the people who make them,” said Danny Siegenthaler.

“So far our brand, Wildcrafted Herbal Products, has been primarily available via our website and to patients that come to our Clinic, but there was no specialised outlet where people could go to experience, smell, touch and try the products. Now with the opening of Wildcrafted Cottage, not only can people come and test our natural skin care products, but they can also sample our full range of personal care, hair care, Aromatherapy spa-blends and Therapeutic creams,” said Susan Siegenthaler.

The formulations of all the products throughout the entire range of Wildcrafted Herbal Products are based on the principles of herbal medicine. Susan, a renowned medical herbalist, formulated each of the products to maximise their safety and effectiveness.

Wildcrafted’s range of natural skin care products, as well as all the other products, only contain 100% natural and certified organic ingredients to ensure the highest quality, effectiveness and purity of every product.

“Over the last 25 years we’ve fine-tuned our formulations to be as safe and effective as possible”, said Susan. “My aim has always been not to just make another range of natural skin care products, but a range of products that are of therapeutic potency and effectiveness”, she said.

Wildcrafted Cottage opened its doors in October 2009 and is located in Kurrajong Village, northwest of Sydney in the lower Blue Mountains. Kurrajong is surrounded by natural bush land and is a picturesque, small Village, making it an ideal choice for the first of Wildcrafted’s retail stores.

The whole range including the latest line of anti-ageing products are now on display at Wildcrafted Cottage - Kurrajong.

Dermatology, Skin Care, Skin Problems & a range of Hints & Tips

This library contains a directory of articles written by Danny and Susan Siegenthaler who together have over 40 years of experience in the field on natural medicine. Danny is a doctor of traditional Chinese medicine and his wife Susan is a medical herbalist who has taught hundreds of student in medical aromatherapy and herbal medicine.

These articles draw on their years of clinical experience and provide the reader with high quality information about natural skin care and related topics.

In addition there are several Universities and medical references worth bookmaking. Many of them are great sources of authoritative information.

University of Maryland Medical Center.
UMM provides a great deal of quality information on dermatology. The information if well researched, backed by references from scientific sources and is written in mostly non-medical terminology. They also have a large authoritative section of information on herbal medicine.

Articles on Skin Care, Skin Problems and Solutions
Over 100 articles on all aspects of skin care, natural skin care products, natural approaches to treatment of skin disorders and much more.

Information on natural and organic skin care is very confusing to say the least. While we all know that we should avoid synthetic or artificial ingredients in our food and drinks, we are less well informed on the ingredients in our beauty and personal care products.

Merck Manual - Skin Disorders
The Merck Manual is a searchable, online reference text, that provides expert medical information.

Sun Damaged Skin: Avoiding skin damage from the Sun
The incidence of skin cancer is still rising even though there are warnings on TV and other media on a regular basis. Outdoor activities are great; They provide exercise and enjoyment, however, while outdoors we need to make sure we avoid risking sun damage to our skin.

Your Skin Care Regime for Spring
Spring is the time to rejuvenate your skin by following some basic steps: exfoliating, cleansing, nourishing, toning and moisturising. But there is much more to healthy, vibrant skin than a daily skin care regime. The following article provides some practical hints and tips on caring for your skin and preparing it for Summer.

Are You Finding Information on Natural and Organic Skin Care Confusing?
Information on natural organic skin care is very confusing to say the least. While we all know that we should avoid synthetic or artificial ingredients in our food and drinks, we are less well informed on the ingredients in our beauty and personal care products.

Oily Skin - Why You May Have Oily Skin & What To Do About It
Often, oily skin is associated with acne, however, here we will focus on the classic oily skin type and look at the causes and solutions for oily skin.

Skin Care Advice: The Good, Bad & The Ugly
There is a plethora of information about what to do and what not to do when it comes to taking care of our skin. The media is full of reports and the cosmetic/beauty companies run full-page advertisements in popular magazines telling you how you should take care of your skin and the various treatments you should impose on your skin.

Are Natural and Organic Skin Care Products Too Expensive?

There is occasionally discussion among consumers about the retail prices of natural and organic products. Some people wonder if they are being charged a fair price for the goods they purchase or if they are just being ‘taken for a ride’ on what could be the latest fad for ‘natural and organic’ products. This article hopes to shed some light on some of the main factors that influence the retail prices of natural and organic products.

The Real Costs of Natural and Organic Skin Care Products - Too Expensive or Too Inexpensive?

We are asked daily in our business about the cost of our products: some people want to know, given that our products are based on organic and natural ingredients, why they are so inexpensive and others ask why our products cost so much. Two different questions asked from two different perspectives.

The first question is asked from the belief that organic and natural raw ingredients are frequently high in price and so it is expected that products based on these types of ingredients would be expensive. The other perspective is asked from the belief that the production of natural and organic ingredients (well, they do grown on trees don’t they?”) should cost less than the manufacture of synthetic or mass-produced ingredients and thus products based on these should be inexpensive.

The first question is probably closer to the truth than the second in its assumption about the cost of ingredients that are natural and organic.

The production of natural and organic goods, be they foods or raw materials used in further manufacturing, is labour intensive and the demand is currently relatively small compared to the mainstream. In addition, organic producers must go through a cost intensive process to achieve organic certification of their products. These three factors are primary contributors to the basic gross costs of natural and organic products.

Leaving aside global economic crises, the cost of essential oils can significantly influence the ultimate price of natural and organic skin care and personal care products that contain these ingredients. Growing, harvesting, oil extraction, quality testing, market demand and availability all play roles in this.

Essential oils are extracted from the leaves, roots, flowers, fruits and nuts of plants that may be grown as commercial crops or may be wild-harvested (although the latter occurs less and less frequently today due to conservation concerns). Extraction processes vary according to the part of the plant from which the oil is to be extracted and the quality of the oil required at the end of the process. In keeping with increasing demand for pure and high quality essential oils, extraction methods have become more sophisticated and technology-based on the one hand whilst growing and harvesting techniques have returned to more traditional, sustainable and labour-intensive methods.

For the most part, the amount of plant material required to produce a kilogram of essential oil can be huge. For example, it has been estimated that it takes about 500kg of rose petals to produce 1 litre of rose oil (and individual rose petals don’t weigh very much!).

Climatic conditions have a major influence on essential oil prices. For example, a bad season in which there is insufficient rainfall or the occurrence of natural disasters such as storms, hail, floods and fires, can affect the amount of plant material available for harvesting and therefore, the amount of essential oil that can be extracted. In this scenario, a limited amount of essential oil available to the market can cause a dramatic increase in price. Man–made disasters such as wars also have a detrimental effect on the availability of many of our much-loved essential oils.

Australia has a relatively small essential oil producing industry, with most of the essential oils sold in Australia imported from elsewhere. Included in the list of ‘elsewhere’ is Hungary, China, India, Egypt, West Indies, Thailand, Italy, USA, Vietnam, Sri Lanka, Indonesia, France, Somalia, Madagascar, Spain, Brazil, United Kingdom, Paraguay, Bulgaria and Tunisia. On average, of the most commonly sold essential oils available in Australia, only 16% are produced here.

We won’t even bother to factor in costs like import duties and other taxes on the imported essential oils.

Market forces also exert an influence on the cost of essential oils. One of the most useful and sought after essential oils in the perfumery and cosmetics industries is Rose Oil and this of course, increases its demand in the market place. The average cost of 1 kilogram of Certified Organic Rose Otto oil is AU$12,000!!! Amazingly, this is not the most expensive of the essential oils.

It is true that essential oils from plants that grow abundantly, easily and have a high essential oil content are less expensive. However, these are also often the essential oils that are less useful in skin care and body care formulations.

The average price of a 25ml bottle of pure certified organic essential oil is currently AU$72.00, so it can be seen that skin and body care products containing pure certified organic essential oils may have a good excuse to be more expensive than the average mass-produced, synthetic-based Brand X product.

Why then, you may well ask, do manufacturer’s put certified organic essential oils into their products? Why not leave the nice aromas out altogether?

The answer is simply that essential oils are not in the products solely for their wonderful aromas. Essential oils have amazing and often profound direct beneficial effects on the skin and hair as well as producing beneficial psychological and psychosomatic effects via their influence on the nervous and hormonal systems.

Natural and organic skin and body care products that contain essential oils are not just exerting a superficial or cosmetic effect on your skin but also have the potential to positively influence your health and well-being, with effects that are definitely more than skin deep.

Take a look at our 100% natural & organic skin care range

So, to return to the original question of whether the cost of organic and natural skin care products is too expensive or too inexpensive, it all depends on what’s in them and how much of the ingredients a product contains.

At Wildcrafted, our products contain therapeutic quantities of ingredients, this by necessity makes them expensive to manufacture. However, our costs are minimised, because we do not distribute them through traditional supply chains. That is we supply our products directly to our customers via our on-line store, which means they are not as expensive as they would be if customers where able to buy them at a local store.

If that were the case, the retail price of our products would be approximately double that of what our customers are currently paying.

Wildcrafted’s aim has always been to provide the highest possible product quality and effectiveness at an affordable price.

We hope that we have been able to shed a little bit of light on some of the contributing factors involved. We also hope that we have been able to show that the health benefits gained from using an organic and natural product go beyond cosmetic improvement to your skin and hair.