News & Infomation

Welcome,

Dig in!

As I write this various financial institutions are falling apart having dug their own grave by selling insecure credit or somehow being connected to that. Up until recently the Health Food Trade Press seems to have wanted to live in denial that we also are affected, so I welcome their more recent admission that actually sales are down, overheads are up, profits are limited or nonexistent and some Retail shops are closing.

You and I are at the sharp end - we see the reality. No need to put spin on it, let's call a spade a spade! Recession is here! Sales in the health food shops (in general) are down.

One of the most important things to do when sales are static or even going down is to "dig in" - look very hard at overheads in particular. We have been doing that for some time now and because of that I believe that we at Goodness are in a good position to weather the storm. The forecast is that this down turn in the economy will last till the Spring of 2010.

Another area where we;re digging in is food waste. We only throw food away that has become a danger because the packaging is damaged and therefore the integrity of the food cannot be guaranteed. See "Focus on Goodness life" for more details.

The Office of Fair Trade is also digging - for evidence that the large supermarkets have been price-fixing. In fact they are price fixing despite the fact that they have seen sales increase. The shopper is definitely looking for ways to make their money go further.

Whilst the credit crunch is having serious, but hopefully short term effects, the Traditional Herbal Medicinal Products Directive is going to have much greater and long term effects on our sales. Reading the article on this in the Natural Products magazine makes us realize that we need to dig out the manufacturing companies and ask for evidence of their progress in getting their products licensed. According to the article the number of products licensed to date is a couple of dozen - of the many hundreds currently available!

And all this against a back ground of greater customer knowledge about foods and food supplements. According to an article in the Health Food Business magazine consumers will continue to take health into their own hands, relying less on doctors and more on self-diagnosis using products from the VMS sector to help improve their health. We must capitalise on this by digging out products, nutritional and beauty care products, which will stand the test of time as well as legislation.

Jan

Any comments?
E-mail jan.walsma@goodness.co.uk