Lavender Lane- Unique Herbal Business Relocating To Grants Pass
By Joan Jones
Staff Writer / SouthernOregonNews.com
Wednesday, Mar 31, 2004
Grants Pass, Oregon - Have you ever wished you could make your own lotions, perfumes, candles and soaps? If you have thought about it, maybe you think it would be expensive and difficult. It so, you haven't met Donna Mitchell, owner of Lavender Lane Hard-to-Find Herbalware. In Mitchell's new outlet, set to open May 1, customers will find, not only the ingredients, but the help needed to make all their own products, as Mitchell says, "in minutes for pennies."
For the past 17 years, Mitchell's business, Lavender Lane Hard-to-Find Herbalware, was located in Sacramento, California. Besides the storefront there, she also offered an extensive catalog, both in hard copy and on-line. Upon discovering the Rogue Valley in her travels, Mitchell decided to relocate the entire business to Grants Pass.
While the Grants Pass store, which will soon open at 839 Rogue River Highway, will carry all the items in Mitchell's catalog, Lavender Lane also offers much more than the name implies. A wide array of how-to books, videos and kits will help those new at making soaps, aromatherapy oils and skin products. Then there are the ingredients-many of which are hard to find like raw shea butter, Turkey Red oil, tincture of benzoin, sweet dream pillow, French green, Moroccan Red and even China white clay, usually found in expensive Europen Health Spas but obtainable from Mitchell for just pennies in comparison.
One great advantage to making your own products is customers will know exactly what the ingredients are, Mitchell said. "Unfortunately, most scents found in the marketplace are synthetic and they go right to your bloodstream," she added.
At Lavender Lane, customers will learn how to differentiate between the pure and the synthetic products, giving them the opportunity to incorporate the purest of the pure and natural ingredients , with no fear of harmful chemicals or preservatives.
Imagine making your own potpourri-with a scent specially blended by you and for you. Other possibilities are aromatherapy oils, bath salts, dusting powders, creams and lotions, as well as a homemade herbal pet care kit or an herbal first aid kit. Lavender Lane carries all the ingredients and the know-how to help people make everything themselves.
"I can take the mystique out of doing it," Mitchell said.
Have you ever wanted to make your own candles? Mitchell provides both the ingredients and the molds. Clay beauty masks? No problem.
Classes offered at Lavender Lane will offer include crafting with fragrance, aromatherapy for beginners, aromatherapy for pets, topical herbal preparations and how to market your herbal treasures through home parties.
"One or our main functions is education," said Mitchell, who plans to also have videos available for customers. One video particularly, entitled "Crafting With Fragrance Makes Scents," usually runs throughout the day in the showroom, showing folks how easy it is to make their own concoctions.
Lavender Lane will also make available a library of the most popular herbal and aromtherapy books for those looking to enhance their endeavors, or for those just looking for special recipes. If customers find a recipe they like, Lavender Lane will also offer within the building a full service copy center, along with a self-serve copy machine for those who wish to make their own copies from available books.
Speaking of their full service copy center, it will not only offer a compendium of service from high-speed color copying, binding and finishing, laminating, folding, faxing, CD duplication and internet emailing, but the most unique of all will be printing of herbal business cards, hang-tags, stationary, flyers and short-run labels for containers for those who want their scented treasures to dazzle with professionalism from the inside out.
Mitchell has seen women learn to make their own beauty products and go on to build a business, selling at craft fairs and in stores. She offers literally hundreds of containers in all sizes and shapes, both glass and plastic, to fill with these creations.
Mitchell also stresses that she tries to keep items she sells affordable for everyone. Since products are available right here in the Rogue Valley, customers will automatically save money because they won't pay shipping as others do across the country when ordering. There is no minimum purchase, even when ordering from the catalog.
Lavender Lane will keep up the mail-order part of the business from the 5,000 square foot space. Seventy-five percent of this space is devoted to warehouse.
Mitchell discovered the power of natural ingredients through her own unique journey. After working for the Postal Service, she was injured on the job. This led to a very painful experience with firbromyalgia. At the time, this rare and extremely painful soft tissue disorder was so new it didn't even have a name. Undiagnosed for almost a decade, Mitchell's pain spread to eventually consume 90 percent of her body.
Besides having no name, this disease also had no cure.
To compound Mitchell's problems, she developed a sleep disorder which gave her barely an hour's sleep a night and, although she had to quit her job, she received no financial compensation. Finally, almost bedridden, she was in danger of even losing her home.
Taking advantage of her inability to sleep, it was during this time that Mitchell began researching herbal folk lore and remedies. Her interest was peaked by the hundreds of herbal and botanical concoctions from food to fragrance to medicine and everything in between. She was soon spending all her time gathering old recipes together.
"I found a wealth of information going back 100 years," Mitchell said.
Although she didn't find a specific cure for her malady, Mitchell did decide to take the information she's acquired and write a book. This self-published book, "Crafting With Fragrance Makes Scents," was copied at a local copy outlet, folded and stapled, then put out under the name of Lavender Lane Press.
Mitchell started growing herbs in her small garden, teaching others how to make the herbal concoctions. Finally too, her fibromyalgia had a name but still no cure. Once Lavender Lane came into being, she was forced to hire more and more people to get the work accomplished.
In 1994, Mitchell was approached by a friend with a product he thought might help. This product, made of concentrated fruits and vegetables, was called Juice-Plus.
"I was on 12 cortisone shots a week," Mitchell said. "I was in so much pain, I was willing to try anything."
Within 10 days of starting Juice Plus, Mitchell says, she was sleeping for eight hours again and within three or four months she was out of the wheel chair. Mitchell's' husband, Mitch, who since then has passed away, was legally blind from macular degeneration. Through Juice Plus, he found his sight restored to about 70 percent. Son Chris, injured in a severe auto accident and left with diminished mental capacity, also regained his mental faculties.
This was no quick fix, she said, and is not claiming medical miracles. "The business of nutrition is to build a better body. This has to wait on nature to turn over body cells. In three to four months, your whole blood supply is completely replaced. In one year, all your bones too are replaced, constructed entirely out of the nutrients you eat."
"Are these miracles?" Mitchell asked. "They could be but down deep we all know our bodies possess the ability to heal themselves, we just need to provide them with the right kind of fuel."
"All this sounds as if it would be expensive," she said. "But it's not."
So impressed was Mitchell with the results she saw from Juice Plus, she became a distributor for the products.
Another aspect of the new Lavender Lane store in Grants Pass will be a courtyard out front with a natural smoothie bar where people can try the Juice Plus products and attend free "Prevention Plus" seminars. A couple of the presentations she offers are "The 7 Foods That Are Killing You" and "Getting Your Kids to Eat Right' (A Health Education Meeting for parents).
"Our store will be a place where people love to stay," Mitchell said. "We'll have soft music and fountains." Demonstrations will also be held throughout the day.
Mitchell hopes to network with the community also. She would love to have soap makers from the area come in and teach and form a relationship with local herb growers. In the future, Lavender Lane will contain a full kitchen where she will offer healthy cooking classes.
A wealth of herbal information can be gleaned from the shortest conversation with Mitchell. For instance, did you know:
-A drop of peppermint oil in a glass of water can reduce nausea and promote digestion?
-To dispel a headache, inhale natural peppermint oil. This also works well on stuffy heads and sinuses?
-If you put drops of essential oil on pieces of cardboard in different combinations, go away for 15 minutes, and then come back and smell them, you can create your own special fragrance?
-Oils for refreshment and invigoration include sage, lemon, line, pine and eucalyptus?
-For motions sickness, chew a piece of fresh ginger root or crystallized stem ginger?
For more information on the upcoming delights offered by Lavender Lane, call Mitchell at 541-474-3551 or email her at lavenderlane@starband.net
Until the new store opens, check out the items offered on Lavender Lane's website, www.lavenderlane.com For more information on Juice Plus, visit Mitchell's website at www.jp4life.net
Contact info: Joan Jones may be reached at joan@southernoregonnews.com.
Jones, Joan. "Lavender Lane-Unique Herbal Business Relocating To Grants Pass." SouthernOregonNews.com 31 03. 2004. . 02 04. 2004 http://www.roguerivernews.com/articles/index.cfm?artOID=180175&cp=11035
EMAIL ALERTS
