The Turtles Need Our Help

We are fortunate enough to live, work and play in Brevard County Florida, one of the worlds most important nesting grounds for sea turtles. From the first of May through the early fall, sea turtles climb the beach to the dunes where they build nests to lay their hundreds of eggs.

The hatchlings emerge (usually in the summer) and frantically head toward the water. It is an amazing phenomenon to watch and my kids and I saw it right before our eyes about 20 years ago on one warm summer night at our beach. I have been a huge fan and supporter of sea turtles ever since. As you may be aware, these majestic creatures are struggling to survive and thrive.

Recently we partnered with the Brevard Zoo and becoming patrons supporting their important work as they build their sea turtle rehab program. In addition, with the start of our newest Absolutely Natural spa line, we have dedicated space on each label to help raise awareness of sea turtles. These bottles are distributed worldwide to resorts fronting the Pacific Ocean, Atlantic Ocean, Mediterranean Sea, the Caribbean Sea and the Gulf of Mexico.

Of course, our products are reef-friendly and the recent scientific study of our sunblocks proves that our sunscreens biodegrade in as little as 14 days. Incredible when you consider chemical sunscreens can take months and months to biodegrade and are thought to be one of the main causes of our precious coral reefs dying off at an alarming rate.

We invite you to join us in supporting these magnificent turtles. To learn how you can help make a difference in sea turtle survival, visit:

Sea Turtle Conservancy
The Sea Turtle Conservancy, formerly known as the Caribbean Conservation Corporation, is the world's oldest sea turtle research and conservation group. Sea Turtle Conservancy's research programs have yielded much of what is now known about sea turtles and the threats they face, and the organization is applying this knowledge to carry out the world's most successful sea turtle protection and recovery programs.

Sea Turtle Preservation Society
The society's goal is to help maintain the current sea turtle population and to prevent a potentially irreversible decline in that population.

The Narture Conservency
The Nature Conservancy protects Earth's most important natural places — for you and future generations — through great science and smart partnerships.

Florida Wildlife Federation
The "Goal" of the Federation is to be the leader in promoting, through education and political action, the conservation, restoration, sound management, and wise and ethical use of Florida's natural resources, to the end that present and future Floridians may live, work and pursue traditional outdoor activities in an outstanding natural environment.

Florida Marine Turtle Program
FWC helps to protect and conserve marine turtles and their habitat through the Division of Habitat and Species Conservation - Imperiled Species Management Section (ISM), the Fish and Wildlife Research Institute (FWRI) and the the Division of Law Enforcement (LE).

New Year’s Resolutions … Absolutely Natural Style

Year after year it’s always the same thing:
• Lose weight
• Get organized
• Exercise 20 hours a week.

The resolutions usually last less than the time it takes to make them, but I challenge our customers to embark upon an Absolutely Natural Year of Resolutions.

Resolve to do something good for your whole body:
Resolve to use our incredible Organic Oil or Organic Crème daily for a month. You will be amazed at the results. I talked to a man just yesterday who has severe eczema … to the point where he has had no hair on his right arm for years. His wife talked him into using the organic oil everyday and within one month his skin condition improved dramatically and his arm hair had returned! He is absolutely thrilled.

Resolve to reveal more radiant youthful skin:
We recommend your daily “work out” consist of our daily regimen for your face, Facials … the Absolutely Natural five-step facials program. Burn calories morning and night using our cleanser and following with the astringent, toner and then our uplifting daily facial lotion. Two to three times a week you can increase the activity by incorporating our bamboo exfoliator into the mix. Feel the burn? Actually, no you won’t; you’ll only feel the amazing softness, smoothness and enjoy the youthfulness our Facials System promises and delivers.

Resolve this year to eliminate
sulfates, phthalates and parabens from your skin and blood stream:
It’s easy with Absolutely Natural’s new spa products. Choose between our Papaya Pineapple or Cucumber Mint natural fragrances in the personal care products … shampoo, conditioner, body wash and body lotion. The products are moisturizing and a nutrient-rich treat for the skin, hair and scalp.

Resolve to stay hydrated and protected:
This summer keep your skin protected by our natural sunscreens and hydrated by the phenomenal aloe, shea butter, squalane-based lotion in all of our sunscreens and Rosehip Aloe.

Resolve to save the planet’s precious resources:
While enjoying the sun, you can live up to your resolution of helping save the planet as NONE of our products will harm the coral reefs of our precious oceans.

In fact, as the founder and owner of company, I think we should all resolve to improve our skin, our hair, our health and environment by using as many Absolutely Natural products as possible. Of course, this is written with serious tongue-in-cheek intentions. I’m all for exercising, losing weight and all the resolutions so many of us make year in and year out, but the Absolutely Natural 2011 resolutions will be the easiest to stick with.

Happy New Year and thanks for your continued support.

Charley

Winter Brings Harsh Challenge to Your Skin

Brrrrrr! Winter is here in all its fury and as many of you know, that can be bad news for your skin.

With the cold, dry, dry air and wind, (not to mention the harshly dry heat pushed out by your furnace) it can seem impossible to keep skin hydrated and healthy. Before you know it, your skin is itchy, scaly, parched, peeling and sometimes, even cracking. Ouch!

This dry skin can appear everywhere from your hands (which get worse in the winter with our frequent hand washing in flu season), to your elbows, feet, knees and all the way to your face, neck, lips… you name it.

Good news!
However you suffer from dry skin, we have a solution, so long as you are diligent in your regimen. Here’s some guidance…

Shea Butter:
Get deep intensive treatment for cracked hands, elbows and the heels of your feet. Generously apply the Shea a couple of times a day and within a week or so, you will notice a significant improvement. For bad trouble spots such as hands and feet, we recommend a thick application before bed, cover up with socks/gloves to provide the best therapy.

Organic Beauty Oil:
Apply this daily immediately following your shower or bath to lock in moisture. Our organic blend works excellently as a super hydrator plus you get all the benefits of the antioxidants.

Organic Spa Series Bath and Body Oil:
A great trick with these oils is to apply them while you’re still in the shower. Pump into palms and massage into your skin evenly. Rinse briefly to help the oil cover your skin more evenly. Step out, towel off and you’re ready to go! No chilly, post-shower lotion or oil application needed!

Sugar Scrubs:
One of the newest items we rolled out with our Organic Spa Series are our body scrubs. Sugar scrubs are naturally gentle and won’t irritate skin. Gently massage over your trouble spots… you’ll find as the sugar rinses away, the butters and oils in our formulas provide deeply soothing hydration. Massage and rinse… towel dry and you’re ready to go!

Sulfate-free Body Wash and Shampoos:
Commercial formulas are loaded with synthetic fragrances and sulfates, which can dry and irritate your skin. Using our Sulfate-free formulas is far gentler on skin and avoids stripping vital nutrients.

Lip Moists:
Chapped lips are the worst! Soothe your lips with a nutrient-rich lip butter in any of our 4 varieties. Reapply as needed, the little lip moist pot will slip easily into your pocket or purse.

Best regards,
Charley

Giving Thanks

This year has been a whirlwind and personally it is hard for me to believe that Thanksgiving is here and before you know it, the first of the year.

And, even in this hectic business and holiday cycle, it is important to take a step back, evaluate what is happening and be thankful for the really important things in life.

As the owner of Absolutely Natural, my biggest thanks go to our loyal customers. You are the reason we set our standards so high and never compromise on quality. The thousands of letter we get are proof positive our insistence on being the best is working.

One of my biggest thrills is talking to our customers some of whom I have “known” for almost 20 years. I recently had the privilege of meeting Maureen Hafner who has been a favorite of mine since 1999, when she found our products in Waikiki Beach. We attended the I-Spa show in Washington D.C. and Maureen and her husband came by and we had a lovely visit. It was great putting a face to the voice.

I am so thankful for our dedicated staff and all the hard work they put in to make these wonderful products. They know how much I appreciate them one and all. Lindsey who is our project manager and Vice President of the company; Danny who heads our production area and soon to be in sales; Todd, national sales manager; Anita, Matt, Chris and Evan in production; Ben who is in inventory control plus all of our sub contractors.

A special thanks to Bob Hamner, formula developer extraordinaire and Suzanne Clements, who has made all of us look better with her incredible talents in photography, graphic design, copy writing and a million other things.

I am also thankful for our great list of retailers who have made our product known worldwide. As of last count we are in nearly 300 resorts.

We are also grateful to the men and women who put themselves in harm’s way so we can live a free life and take advantage of our opportunities. To the brave soldiers and sailors and our air force and all branches of service, we thank you and feel blessed to have you.

Here’s to a great holiday season.

Best regards,

Charley

Alternative Uses...

Throughout the years, I have heard from many customers who are innovative in their use of our products. Ever think of using our Pure Aloe with tea tree oil as a hair pomade? One of our salesmen in Hawaii has been doing this for years!

Our famous Rosehip Aloe has many uses and most prevalently as a shaving lotion. I've tried it and it does provide a great shave. Wash your face (I'm talking to men, of course) with our Facial Cleanser or Shower Gel and rinse with warm water. Lay the Rosehip Aloe on and let it soak on your face for about a minute. Then shave as you normally would. Expect an unbelievable close and comfortable shave and soft, smooth skin.

One of the more interesting alternative uses came from one of our long time female customers who uses our Tattoo Stay Nu serum as an under eye serum at night. She swears that it works much better than her old $75/oz crème.

For me, we have two products that are by far the most versatile in our line. Our Pure Aloe can be used on insect bites, for shaving irritation, sunburn, kitchen burns and is actually used at Emerson Hospital on radiation patients. I know a lot of our customers keep bottle at home, work and on the boat.

The king of versatility is our Organic Oil. It is an excellent hydrator, great massage oil, and superb bath oil. It is chock full of antioxidants, free radical scavengers, and ant-aging compounds. You can use it as a body oil, under the eyes at night and it is great for a deep conditioning hair treatment. We also have heard from some women who use it as a leave in conditioner as well.

We want to hear from you! What interesting ways have you used our fabulous Absolutely Natural?

True Testimonials...

Before I founded Absolutely Natural in 1992, I spent 20 years selling and distributing other, nationally recognized brands of suncare – brands you would be familiar with. In all those years, I only got a handful of people writing to relay to us how much they liked the product. They wouldn’t fill a shoe box.

The above fact makes what has happened with Absolutely Natural even more remarkable. Throughout the last two decades, we have received thousands of positive letters from our happy clients extolling the merits of our products.

They often start like this, “Every time I use the Rosehip Aloe it reminds me of Maui (or Mexico, or the Caribbean, or any other of our worldwide destinations).” We have hundreds of those.

You Saved My Vacation
I really appreciate the ones where we have helped people. “You saved my vacation” is a frequent theme where someone got too much sun and our aloes saved the day. I got one from a women who started, “We were 10 minutes from leaving for the hospital when we talked to your skin care consultant.” We’ve had others who have shared with us that they were “never able to enjoy the outdoors until finding Absolutely Natural.”

We have drawers full of letters from people who have improved their skin, their hair and their love life because of our all-natural cosmetic formulas. “My husband and I feel like we’re back in Cancun every time we use the Organic Oil. We trade back rubs several times a week now.” This was one happy woman!

Dear Charley, I have tears in my eyes as I write this…
My favorite one started like this, “Dear Charley, I have tears in my eyes as I write this …” It was about her daughter who had such terrible acne that she was severely depressed and basically sat in her room avoiding contact with the outside world. She actually had trouble attending school. We worked with her step by step with our incredible facials products. She started seeing improvement within days - and sticking to the program made a significant improvement on her complexion. The letter went on, “… thanks to you and your products, my daughter is a new person. Happy, outgoing and successful. You have a friend and customer for life.” That was two years ago and she still talks to us frequently.

I love hearing from our customers and the favorite part of my day is reading our testimonials. Keep them coming!

Best regards,

Charley

Practically the entire Absolutely Natural team just returned from a harried, hectic, incredibly busy, incredibly productive and all around fantastic convention in Lexington, Kentucky where we introduced a new line of products to several thousand people. The new line is a private label called Envy Organics.

Joining me were Lindsey Pushman, Todd Anderson, Danny Richards, Bob Hamner and Suzanne Clements. We worked as a team demonstrating and explaining the benefits of the new line on thousands of attendees. It was amazing to see our booth swamped 5-10 people deep. As one group moved onto the event store, another group filled in right behind to learn about the new line.

Lindsey and Suzanne were eventually moved to the event store to help answer questions and explain the new line to those who may have missed our booth. In these three days, I saw the most frenzied buying that I have ever witnessed this side of a 75% off shoe sale at Macy’s New York store!

We, aka the “Envy Team”, became quite recognizable over these three days and we truly enjoyed meeting this new group, taking their questions and getting to hear what made them so excited about this new line.

One of the most frequently asked questions directed to me was, How was it that I am so passionate about Absolutely Natural? I think a few of them silently added, Especially for your age!

That’s the easiest question I’ve ever had asked of me. There are so many reasons I love my job and my company. One of the biggest reasons is the young people that work with me. I feed off their enthusiasm and energy. The average age of our employees in our Melbourne office and factory is 27 years old. They are passionate, eager to learn and have great, innovative ideas. It’s infectious and one of the reasons the company is growing so quickly.

Another reason is our products and how they help people. It is a joy to answer the phone and talk with our sales personnel across the world. They almost always are calling to tell yet another story about how our sunscreens or aloes saved someone’s vacation.

Being able to develop unique formulas working with only the best raw materials and the most gifted formulators and cosmetic chemists definitely heightens the passion. I could never sell something I don’t believe in and am product to sell our world class products.

The biggest reason, of course, is the customers. For almost 20 years now we have had a special relationship with our clients. There are some that I know well. Maureen from Virginia; Karla from Chicago; Shan from Nebraska; John and Jamie from Oklahoma; Hillary from New York and I could go on and on. I’ve talked to customers and recommended products for them after their babies were born … those “babies” are now in college.

There are always problems / challenges running a small business but there are so many things to be passionate about.