Saturday 7 December 2013

Michael Joubert talks Super Organic Supplements

Can you give us a little bit of background as to the origins of Super Organic Supplements and how it came to play such a pivotal role in your lives

As a natural health practitioner every time I recommended a client take a supplement, invariably they would buy something I was not happy with them taking.

This led to me to doing a huge amount of research and then creating relationships with organic manufacturers.  For 10 years I sourced my clients fantastic products that really worked and even though I wasn't seeing people as clients anymore, they were still ordering product from me and many had put their friends and family on to me.  So I decided to create a business selling organic supplements online to cater for the ever growing list of customers I had.


For those who may not completely understand the concept of "supplements", can you briefly outline what they are and why organic supplements contribute to our overall wellbeing in a far more positive way than, say, the standard off the shelf kind

To supplement basically means to take extra nutrients (vitamins and minerals) that you are not getting from your diet.  In our busy world where a lot of what we eat is not really food because of the processing and chemicals, it is important to supplement for health.

Now this would not be the case if we were eating fresh organic food all the time rather than processed junk and we weren't depleting the soil of nutrients, polluting the oceans, spraying our food with toxic chemicals, injecting our animals with antibiotics and hormones and consuming massive amounts of sugar and toxic vegetable oils.


Because of the toxic load we are faced with from man-made pollutants and from our commercially farmed and processed food, supplementing has gone from just getting extra nutrients that are missing from our diets, to now getting very specific nutrients that help our bodies to deal with toxicity and help us fight diseases.

Many of these highly specific nutrients have only just been discovered.  Most of them come from plants and fruits in remote corners of the planet and are not accessible to us as food.  That is why they are made into supplements.

The difference between the off the shelf and organic is that most off the shelf products are pharmaceutically manufactured.  If you are taking something from nature, because it has been researched to improve your health, it makes no sense to take something that has been synthesised in a laboratory, trying to replicate what nature has created all for the sake of making it cheaper.

You might as well then say that processed chemically made food is as good for you as fresh organic food.

You have a holistic approach, where your range includes products for mind, body and spirit.  Was this a deliberate choice when you first started or was it evolutionary (ie. as your knowledge and awareness grew, thus your need to provide specific supplements also grew)

It was totally deliberate.  As a holistic therapist, everything is about the mind, body and spirit.  You can't have total health by just concentrating on one part.  Even though the business is called Super Organic Supplements, we stock a range of products that are designed to help people remove toxicity from all aspects of their lives.

Stock a range of products including organic supplements, super foods, organic foods and oils, organic skin and hair care products, water and air purifiers and wellness devices such as cold pressed juicers.


What is it about market life that makes it tangible for you both as a business and personally

As an online shop, you don't get to have that personal interaction with people.  Being at the markets allows us to talk to our customers and guide them into making the correct decision for their health.  It allows us to create relationships with our customers which I feel is really important when it comes to the quality products we sell.

What has been one of the highlights of market life for you so far

There are way too many to choose just one.  With the kind of market stall we have, people really divulge their health problems to us.  So when they come back to you overjoyed that they have been able to stop taking (prescriptive) medications that they have been on for a very long time or that a chronic condition has stopped, that really makes it worthwhile.

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And trust us, these guys are not only some of the nicest people you could find, but their genuine interest and care, where no question is too big or too small, makes them super easy to talk to and able to show an organic alternative can work.