OUR STORY

Shea Alchemy is a small company which started out as Sally’s hobby.

She started making creams for fun, in her kitchen, a few years ago, when she realised just how many dodgy chemicals were in most commercial products on the market. She had bought some 100% natural creams, at vast expense, when in the US, and when she couldn’t find them in the UK – or afford them if she could find them – she decided she would have a go at making natural creams herself.

She bought a ‘seriously’ natural beauty book and set off to Neal’s Yard for ingredients with great enthusiasm and total naivety and needless to say, had all kinds of disasters. Things went mouldy, things curdled, things got stuck in pots, things blocked the sink and some things smelled unspeakable! That first Christmas a lot of her family and friends had presents they might prefer not to remember.

When a friend, Sarah, who (amazingly) had faith in these creams, suggested joining forces and going into business, they decided together to do a professional course in cream-making to ensure that disasters were a thing of the past. They did the course, invested all their (and some other peoples’) money and set up a stall at the Farmer’s Market in Alexandra Palace.

As Sally’s background is in graphic design, she didn’t need to pay anyone else to create the look she wanted and packaging and designing the creams was all part of the fun.

They persuaded all their long-suffering friends and relations to buy or at least, try, their creams, and gradually people started realising they really were very good and started to buy them voluntarily.

Now, a year later, Sally and Sarah have dissolved their partnership in a totally amicable spirit as Sarah has decided that selling on Farmer’s Markets and financial insecurity is not for her. She has now found a secure and rewarding ‘proper’ job but Sally, who has had it with proper jobs, and feels she is too entrepreneurial, in her old age, to work for anyone but herself, has decided to go it alone. Well, sort of. She has now enlisted the invaluable help of:

Prue, her sister, in Northants, who is mainly a headmisstress but spends any free time she has cooking up Shea Alchemy recipes in her kitchen for slave wages with amazing good grace and enthusiasm!

Emma her best friend who lives in York. She is a teacher too but a scientist by training and is brilliant with figures. She is going to be involved on the business side and also cooks up a storm in her kitchen.She too is paid peanuts but is full of enthusiasm and support for the business

and last but absolutely NOT least, Mark who is an IT genius who sorts out everything to do with the web and is completely invaluable regarding anything technical and in fact most other things too!

Progress has been made. Sales are building on the web. We have had amazingly successful fairs at the Innocent Village Fete in Regent’s Park this summer, Haringay Green Fair in Alexandra Palace and the Big Green Fair in York in November. The farmer’s market is doing very well. Brigit Strawbridge. from the TV programme Its Not Easy Being Green. saw Shea Alchemy products at the Haringay Green Festival and promoted them to great effect in her speech there. She is going to include them on her website.

We have developed some new Christmas gift packages this year and produced an even wider range of products. We now order our spring water from the actual source – Keeper’s Lodge in Brigstock where the spring emerges, so we know it is pure, and our staple ingredient, wild Shea Butter, is even better than it was before as we are now sourcing the unrefined product, which is full of vitamins, from a fairtrade co-operative in Ghana.

Our dedication to genuinely pure and natural ingredients knows no bounds ...