Karma: So let's start off with how long you've been a Karma member
Tracey: I started volunteering in 1985 before becoming a member because I lived in the East End. As soon as I could, I moved to a group house nearby and became an active member.
Karma: and what your favourite Karma grocery items are.
Tracey: I've always been a huge fan of the bulk offerings at Karma. Right now, my go-to bulk bin items are walnuts. tofu, gluten-free flour and Canadian dried peas. I always fill a bottle with bulk kombucha. I also always buy bulk dishwasher tabs, homestead eggs, and cat food from Karma. And I buy discounted vegetables every time.
Karma: You're an independent businesswoman. Talk about your business and what you do.
Tracey: I am a Certified Natural Health Practitioner, and I offer handmade natural cosmetics, aromatherapy, and cosmetic-making supplies, including organic ingredients, 500+ ethically sourced essential oils, and dozens of clays, oils, micas, packaging, and zero-waste body & house care, and other Earth and people-friendly goodies.
You may recognize Anarres products on Karma's shelves: Detox Cream Deodorant, After Bite, Sun Protection Cream with Zinc, Rosemary Rhassoul Shampoo Bars, incenses, and essential oils, plus string shopping bags, sets of 3 cotton produce bags, Water Is Life double-walled bottles, bamboo hair brushes, and double sided wooden combs. You can Special Order ANYTHING I carry at AnarresHealth.ca for pick up at Karma Food Coop on the second Sunday of each month.
Karma: What have the challenges been for you, and how have you overcome them?
Tracey: I set out to make handmade, small-batch healthy bodycare products using local, organically farmed and fairly traded ingredients at affordable prices. I also dedicated myself to using only reusable and returnable, or compostable, packaging at prices comparable to products packaged in single use. So my costs are high, but my prices aren't!
I've had up to five employees working with me, and I'm proud of that contribution, but like most of the small businesses around me, my storefront did not survive the COVID closures, and the subsequent years of the doldrums - as our customers themselves struggled, and big businesses started to carry zero waste and greenwashed body care goods - finished off our mainstreet presence. I am working now from a small studio and hoping to pay myself a wage again in 2025. As always, I trust in and appreciate the support of Karma Food Coop and you!
When a long-time customer saw me tabling last spring, she exclaimed, "YOU'RE A PHEONIX!". I've given up my storefront but continue to sell my products by partnering with shops, spas, online stores and my beloved Karma Food Coop. I am always looking for opportunities to collaborate with enterprises that share my values. Anarres Natural Health is more of a vocation than a profitable venture.
Karma: How has Karma helped you, and how have you helped Karma?
Tracey: Karma has always helped me! Not only has Karma provided healthy, affordable, ethical food for my household and family, but Karma has also helped my business by carrying my products and sharing store furnishings when Karma no longer needed them. When Karma Coop set up the new bulk section, I was invited to take the old bulk bins and dispensers for my own store. When I closed my storefront in July 2023, I shared these with a new bulk shop opening farther West.
For perhaps a decade, I've offered monthly DIY workshops at Karma for members and the Karma-curious public. I show participants how to use ingredients found at Karma Coop and that they can Special Order from AnarresHealth.ca to make healthy body care, skincare and cleaning products. In this way, I help promote membership at Karma Coop alongside my work. Join us the second Sunday of each month from noon to 1:30 pm in the Member's Room, or in good weather, at the tables just outside. You can make and take home a custom product, with a donation of $10 suggested for materials.
April 13 12-1:30 pm we'll make DIY Natural Cleaning Products, and in honour of May flowers (May 11 12-1:30 pm), we'll make skin toners and hair detanglers using flower waters, and herbal teas for hair rinses. RSVP by emailing me at AnarresHealth@gmail.com. I look forward to meeting you in one of my favourite places, doing my favourite things!
Karma: Are there times you feel that as a woman-owned business, you have more of an uphill climb to meet your business goals? I imagine the body-care industry is aimed at women, without being necessarily woman-owned.
Tracey: Like most women-owned businesses, I started without outside loans or investments. When I was starting out in 2017 with two kids to support, I attended a number of networking events. I don't know how much good they did me except to find some Kindred Spirits with other values-driven businesses. I participated in a community women's event where the keynote speaker talked about women raising their businesses like children, starting small and nurturing them rather than expecting instant success. A lot of business advice is of the Go Big or Go Home sort, and that's a men's style. My business is not a tap I turn on - it is a service I provide to my community, and it connects me to customers who are part of the fabric of my life. I think this an old-fashioned and a good way to be in business, like the small town hardware store that sponsors the local softball teams. Small enterprises are not at all the same as corporations.
My business is not simply started by me, a woman, but is aimed at women, at undoing the messaging we get around our appearance and our worth. Still, I have many customers who aren't women. I've had the honour of employing and working with women - women of African descent, immigrant and Anishinaabe - reflecting Anarres' customer base. Every woman who worked or apprenticed at Anarres did so out of a love of plants and healing, certainly, though unfortunately, not for the money!
To operate within the so-called cosmetics industry, I have to do a lot of education and re-education because the industry has invented problems and told women they have the solutions. That's what my marketing has always been about: educating. I studied skin histology and evidence-based botanical medicine, as well as traditional body care, and the products I compose implement ingredients that are known to be safe and effective. My pet peeve is the assertion of magazine ads for cosmetics that the product gives "clinical results in two weeks". It's nonsense! First of all, ANY result in a clinical trial is a "clinical result"! But, adult skin cells take two months to turn over and renew. Damaged skin doesn't renew much faster, no matter what you put on it! Yet, because plants are our biological ancestors, in the sense that they make the chemicals that are the natural building blocks of life, our human bodies respond to these medicines.
I love my work because I am constantly learning, and it involves so many things - creating, making, accounting, teaching, illustrating, and always learning from the plants in my garden and the studies published in journals.