News Flash

Fifteen years of Living Naturally
Saje celebrates with relaunch
of  its first Lonsdale store

Caroline Skelton
North Shore News

Sunday, September 30, 2007

To many retailers, "natural" is just another buzzword. But Jean-Pierre LeBlanc and Kate Ross-LeBlanc, co-founders of Saje Natural Wellness, take "natural" very seriously.

"Our mission is growing wellness -- that's our overall Saje vision," said Kate.

These days, the couple are celebrating 15 years in the business, and a relaunch of the very first location of their now-international company: the little store in Lonsdale Quay.

The pair got into the business after a car accident left Jean-Pierre ricocheting between doctors in an attempt to deal with the residual pain. But none of the muscle relaxants, pain killers and anti-inflammatories seemed to be working.

"It eventually occurred to me that there had to be a better way to get well than all these drugs," he said. "So I went looking for what was known then as alternative medicine."

He found many alternatives to conventional medicine -- but it was essential oils that captured the hearts and minds of the couple.

"We went to Europe and walked the organic lavender fields of Provence, we met with some of the top aromatherapists in England, and we realized that the rest of the world seemed to know that essential oils was a powerful form of medicine," he says.

With this knowledge, they overhauled their little cosmetics store at Lonsdale Quay, turning it into an aromatherapy store.

The Saje products of today are based around the couple's belief in natural products as a healthier alternative to products with synthetic ingredients and other toxins.

"If we're taking in more toxins than we can get rid of in a day, we're basically building up toxic waste in our muscle tissue, in our brain tissue," said Jean-Pierre.

The company has launched many products that aim to detoxify the body, rather than adding more toxins into it, he said.

"There's so many places, if we live in a modern world, that we can't always control the type of toxins we're breathing in," said Kate. Simply breathing in city air, for instance, can bring toxins into the body -- so, she said, the company hopes to provide an alternative, synthetics-free approach to personal care.

Since launching the store, Jean-Pierre said customers have become more savvy about the products they carry.

"Once upon a time, it was aroma-what?" he said. When he asked for loans to get the business off the ground, he said, "the banker tried to convince me I was in the snake oil business."

But since the launch of their Lonsdale Quay store, the advent of the Internet, particularly, has made it possible for people to get and share information about products and concerns, leading many to consider natural products.

"I think that initially there were people who were attracted to our stores because it was considered maybe New Age or it was maybe more of a trendy thing, and I feel that isn't the case anymore," said Kate. "It's much more mainstream, it's much more accepted and understood that alternatives such as essential oils and herbs are therapeutic."

Almost too mainstream: in the company's early years, they would often use the term "aromatherapy" to describe their products. Yet these days, with that term applied to everything from candles to dish detergent, it has lost much of the natural meaning it once had.

Another struggle has been to differentiate Saje's natural products -- which they strive to make free of toxins and synthetics -- with other products that contain chemicals, yet adopt the "natural" tag.

"In Canada, there is no regulation to how much of your ingredient list needs to be natural for you to use that word," said Kate. "I think one of the obstacles we've had is people really understanding that we take natural quite seriously."

Today the company is on solid ground, with expansion in mind, yet this wasn't always the case.

"Kate and I began this with too little money," said Jean-Pierre. "So that was a challenge that followed us for many years."

More and more people have shown up to support the company in troubled times, hoping to support the culture that the company espouses.

"We love who we are and who we attract and who we get to play with," says Jean-Pierre. "We're accomplishing some phenomenal things that go beyond the day-to-day retail sale of a wellness product."

New projects for the company include a line of natural cosmetics, to be released this year.

"Now it's as though we've come full circle," said Kate.

While cosmetics was their first business, their work with natural skincare turned them off the primarily synthetic products on the market.

"I'm working on formulations right now that will actually allow women to wear colour cosmetics without putting synthetics and other harsh chemicals onto their face," said Kate.

The company also has high hopes for the future, planning to open 100 stores in Canada in the short-term, and 1,000 stores throughout the world in the long-term, and they already have a store in California, and another in Taiwan.

For more information, see www.saje.ca