So.. should I write this in third person or first person? I always wrestle a bit with that question. 🙂 As many of you may have figured out, Jeff, my husband, takes part in Jordan’s Crossing in a number of vital ways, but basically I (mary) am the actual herb-y person behind the website and the articles and products. Then too, there’s our daughter and daughter-in-law who help to make products, and our son and son-in-law who help behind the scenes with ‘puter stuff and building stuff. So if I speak in the first person, just know there’s more than just me. 🙂
So, anyway, for a while now Jeff and I’ve been discussing off and on what we’d consider ‘our philosophy’ about doing business as Jordan’s Crossing. And I kinda wanted to just touch base with that by sharing a few thoughts with you this week.
So to start, I’ll kinda toss out some of the things we’ve been talking about, and then elaborate a little. Here we go: We want to actually serve our community and customers and not take advantage of them. For us, this isn’t as much about business as it is about helping others. We wanna keep our prices fair, and low, and at levels that we ourselves wouldn’t mind paying. And yet be able to offer quality, homemade stuff, which actually works, and that doesn’t have chemicals and harmful things in it.
Now, I’m not sayin’ JsCrossing isn’t here to be a business. We’re definitely here to make a living, and our labor is worth something. But our heart is to be here for our customers first, and that means, in part, that we want to keep our prices low. Mark up on health-related things is outrageous, but to us, it just doesn’t seem right to charge $10 for something that costs less than $2 to make. I’m not trying to judge anyone’s business practices, I’m just saying making a buck isn’t our biggest priority, and so we take measures to keep our prices affordable.
So, beyond a fair and reasonable mark up, here are some other ways we also keep prices low. First of all, we aren’t focused on being organic. Honestly, for us in our personal life, we’ve always been kinda half and half over the ‘organic’ issue. We’ve just never been able to afford to go whole-hog on organic everything, but yet we want stuff that’s not low-end and unhealthy either. So… think mediumish. We use stuff that’s not ‘organic’ or the very top-o’-the-line ingredients, but yet is healthy, wholesome, and good for you none-the-less.
With that said, we’re certainly not against organic; in fact, organic anything is always best. If you can afford it, we encourage you in that direction, especially if you have some serious illness or health issues going on. Most all of our home and beauty products we sell have a recipe for an organic version of them on the internet somewhere with easily attainable ingredients.
Another way we keep prices down is that we don’t use Young Living and Do Terra Essential Oils. We get asked about this all the time. These two are the top-o’-the-line essential oils companies. They’re also very expensive. Again, if you can afford them, we encourage you in their direction. For us, we’ve chosen to go with a company called “100 Percent Essential Oils”. We’ve done business with them for quite a while now and personally use their products ourselves for our own home and health needs. With the essential oils market being extremely unregulated, it’s hard to know who’s on the up and up, but both the products and business practices of “100PureEssentialOils.com” have exceeded our expectations.
Packaging and recycling are other ways we keep costs down. We’re pretty home grown altho’ I hope we don’t seem redneck. 😛 We hope our packaging and labels are pretty and make you or a friend smile maybe, but they’re certainly not terribly fancy.
Okay, so I think that hits the main things of what we’ve been thinking about ‘how to do business’ and where we stand. I’m sure as we follow this li’l business journey that we’ll have more experiences to think through. We hope most of all tho’, to make products that actually work and are truly a help to our customers… and even more than that, we want God to be glorified in everything we do. That’s what we feel we’re here for.
Come see us at the Bartlesville Market this Saturday! S’posed to reach 100 degrees. Gonna be an iced coffee kinda morning! 😀
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The purpose of Jordan’s Crossing Herbal Connections is to promote the sharing of information about healthy, natural products and dietary supplements. JCHC’s views and opinions are INFORMATIONAL ONLY and are not intended to constitute medical advice. If you are sick, injured or pregnant, please consult a licensed health care professional.