So, who sells their dream business and then gets the opportunity to buy it back 5 years later?  Apparently, I do!

I’m beyond excited to have the chance to do something with Oh Natural again. For me, the best part of the business was always the incredible community – our amazing customers and social media friends. As an introvert, chatting with you online was the perfect way to connect! Looking back through old Facebook and website reviews is honestly so heartwarming. Seeing so many of you mention me by name meant the world to me at the time – and still does!

I’ve never been one to share too much about myself and it feels super weird to talk about myself so much (classic introvert vibes – haven’t even shared a pic on social media in two years), but I only get one shot at reintroducing myself – so here goes!  If it gets too boring… please, please, stop reading!

(History was never my favourite subject) but here’s a “brief” one on Oh Natural…

Oh Natural was born out of a few things really – mainly wanting to be able to work for myself so I could be at home with my baby, for longer, and time (well a wee bit of time, when he was asleep).  I had no idea how to start a business or anything about business – but someone said to me to just start working on something that was my passion and the “business” side of things would come.  

I’d always been a bit of a natural beauty product junkie – my mum introduced me to the more “natural” lifestyle after

an interesting convo she’d had with her acupuncturist, so the seed had been planted and I decided I’d start a “blog” about natural beauty finds and that kind of thing.  I reached out to heaps of brands and was lucky enough to receive lots of beautiful (and free) samples and plenty of free products to give away too – which definitely helped in building a bit of an online community (this was 2012 – so kind of pre-influencer days and felt like a pretty big deal to me!)

Fun fact – I never really liked the name Oh Natural. If I knew it was gonna stick I probably would have given it more thought and tried to come up with something a bit cooler.  But I had a Facebook page already made under that name with 100 or so followers from days prior, when I used to randomly make soaps and sell them on Trade Me (for a loss haha).

It actually didn’t take too long to realise there were some pretty cool natural brands out there, that at the time weren’t available in little old NZ so I added a small “online store” to the site which only had 4 brands – Hurraw! Lip Balms, Soapwalla Deodorant, Priti NYC Nail Polish and… (there was a fourth I’m sure of it, but the perimenopause brain fog isn’t going there right now).  

Orders started trickling in, and let me tell you – the whole “small business owners do a happy dance with every order” thing? 100% true.  Even just a couple of orders a day was THRILLING.   Side note, at the time, my baby (Finn) was a superrrrr terribleeee sleeperrrrr – as in he’d wake up as soon as I put him down for a nap during the day, and he’d wake like clockwork every 45 minutes during the night for like…. the whole first year and more.  

I swear having Oh Natural was what got me through that period (and at the very least got me away from Googling how to fix his sleeping every spare moment I had!).  It was my little escape and my reminder that I might be building something special.

Things grew…

As time went on, my little side business grew.  It was probably the perfect time for natural/eco products – in that, you

 couldn’t just go and get bamboo pegs from Mitre 10 and awesome shampoo bars from your local discount chemist.  People genuinely seemed to LIKE shopping at Oh Natural and that was so exciting to me. I loved packing orders – wrapping them carefully with a little chocolate and a handwritten note, seeing what customers were buying, and the best bit – finding new products.

The store grew from just these 4 (or maybe it really was 3…) brands to in its prime, 120 very awesome brands.  Which reminds me too – suppliers.  I absolutely loved building relationships with suppliers too.  I also had the best team of contractors that helped me a) make Oh Natural look polished and pretty and b) make Oh Natural grow even more – I could not have done it without them and one thing I’ve really loved is working with so many other mums in business!

Other things also grew… my tummy grew two more times and I ended up with three (yes, three – life is extremely noisy) beautiful boys – Finn, Will and Blake.  Busy times indeed – it felt like all the things in life were happening at once but it was lovely in its own chaotic way. 

I distinctly remember packing orders while in early labour with Blake because I knew I’d be out of action for a few days. And my husband, Andrew (yeah, he probably deserves a special mention before here) would work all day, then spend his nights helping me pack 50-100 orders until nearly midnight. Eventually, he quit his job, and we lived the Kiwi small business dream for a bit… though it was way busier and more stressful than imagined.

There were huge highs – like when Makaia Carr posted about our products and crashed our website (sounds bad but it’s good haha), or when we got featured in The Herald and magazines. And, inevitably, there were lows – like when the website went down for three whole days, or when I stocked bone broth and quickly realised that many of our customers were vegan. (Oops. )

Then I reevaluated…

I think it was around this time that things were so busy we kind of needed extra help and I wasn’t sure how to get it.  Our business was home based and I didn’t really like the idea of someone coming to our home to help with packing orders (hello introvert). I think I was also kind of getting burnt out.  I wasn’t sure how to make having the business any easier or get to the next step but I think the biggest thing was the mum-guilt. 

Pretty much my whole experience of being a parent, I’d had this other “thing” that had taken up a good portion of my mind, even when I didn’t want it to. I was always in a hurry to get the kids to bed on time as I knew we’d be up even later packing orders, and just – I wanted to experience what it was like being a mum, “just a mum” for a bit.  So, we ended up putting Oh Natural on the market and pretty soon Oh Natural had a lovely new owner, Kate.

No one at all: So, what was life like after Oh Natural? Me:

Strangely, it turns out that I didn’t immediately know how to “relax”. Aside from the fact that there’s nothing remotely relaxing about having three sons, I felt itchy to start other projects and founded a real varied bunch of random brands over the next however many months/years before quicky realising that none of them were my passion so I sold them on.  Many of them have already “had their time in the sun” but if you’re keen to check out and support the new owners of the others (all FANTASTIC women), you can have a nosey at SustainaBLAH, Squaties, Maiden Masque and Magical You.

If I’m being completely honest with myself, I also struggled with my identity after Oh Natural. If I wasn’t “Jenna from Oh Natural”, who was I?  When my kids got older, what would my “career” be, was I okay being “just a mum” (please – this is in no ways a criticism of other mums – just acknowledgement of my own internal thoughts and doubts!).  This was probably the reason I flailed around building random brands.

So, I kept busy, and on the plus side actually got healthy and lost a bunch of weight which I really needed to do… only to put it all back on again and more while having future “desk” jobs (I’m on take 2 of this journey now, haha).

I didn’t think too much about what was going to happen financially after Oh Natural (figured, we’d “figure it out”)… I actually wanted to try writing a children’s book, but turns out I’m quite crap at writing, and Andrew dabbled in a lawn mowing business.  Then in 2020 everything went a bit weird all round, didn’t it!?  Andrew joined the police and I needed to get a job also – so ended up working for Shopify for a while.  Crazy busy job, awesome company though.  Very strange experience entering the “workforce” again, after kids!  I felt SO. OLD.  I feel like pre-kids I was always the youngest in a workplace – well turns out afterwards, I am the oldest… well that’s what it felt like, anyway  After 18 months or so at Shopify I left, but still to this day I feel a shiver down my spine when I picture hearing the “ding” of another online chat come in.

The good news is, after Shopify, I actually did work out how to relax for a few months and it was amazingggg.  I still have fond memories of days spent going to the gym and for a walk, and spending time reading in the sun for a bit while the kids were at school.  Don’t get me wrong, without a job we were broke as HECK week to week, but these were also some of my best days where I felt the most reconnected with myself and just, happy!  I actually started reading books again – my love as a child and teen but I hadn’t found the time to do it for years.

This “lady of leisure” life was only a short foray, as I decided I’d better have a look on Seek and came across a “Digital Copywriting” job advertised by HealthPost (yes, I love HealthPost too and spend waaay too much money on there.  Also Digital Copywriting?  Yes, I’ve seen the state of this blog post and I’d have questions too!).  And that’s basically what I’ve been doing ever since… I don’t actually work on HealthPost – but two Aussie brands you probably also love or have at least heard of because they’re basically better versions of Oh Natural haha – Nourished Life and Flora & Fauna.

The Kate era

I know Kate had some hard times navigating the business (think Covid times and all that jazz) but I so appreciate and admire the way she took on the challenge and jumped right in with everything, and if you’ve had any dealings with her you’ll agree she is an awesome individual.  Unfortunately though, Kate decided that running a business, or this business wasn’t her thing and she put it up for sale last year.  Eventually, after sooo much back and forth, second guessing and then “following my heart”… it ended up being back in my hands once more.

But Oh Natural won’t be quite the same anymore…

To be totally transparent with you, Oh Natural is a lot smaller now, and because of the time it took to sell this time around and mixed messages from potential buyers, if you’ve visited Oh Natural lately you might have noticed that most of the products had sold out.  

For me, at this stage I see it that I am taking over the “brand”, rather than a traditional “business” as such.  It has gotten to the point where it would have been a huge investment for me to have to restock everything and more – so the online store section has been put on pause, for the foreseeable at least.  But life is different for me now in that all of my boys are at school so I have actual time that I can invest in creating something again that doesn’t have to be at 11pm or whilst also feeding a baby at the same time, and as you can probably tell – I’m pretty excited about that.

But let’s not just make this about me…

So, what’s in it for you?  At this point in time, I’m not entirely sure where Oh Natural is headed but I have a lot of ideas – and if you’re interested in natural beauty and living then I’d love it if you tagged along with me too!  I’m starting with rebranding and I’m certain there will be plenty of ways we can still connect – I’m thinking lots of giveaways, articles, and the chance for you guys to get involved reviewing different natural products, but there’s a bit to figure out first.

I’m not the same anymore, and Oh Natural won’t be the same – but I think, in a way, it might be better.  I still have a passion for natural living in me, but it’s grown into something bigger too – living your best life, being connected to your most authentic self, learning, growing, empowering and supporting others, giving back and just, so much more.  

Oops back to you again…

If you’ve gotten this far, you deserve a medal! Or at the very least, the chance to win a prize or something soon haha… so please stay tuned as I’m working on it! 😉

What’s the TLDR? (Thanks Chat GPT!)

“After five years away, I’m thrilled to be back at Oh Natural! This journey started as a passion project while navigating motherhood, growing into a thriving business before I eventually stepped away to focus on family. Life took me through new ventures, corporate jobs, and even a short-lived “lady of leisure” phase, but my love for this community and natural living never faded. Now, Oh Natural is back in my hands, but it’s evolving—less about an online store (for now) and more about connection, giveaways, product reviews, and embracing a bigger purpose. I’m not the same, Oh Natural isn’t the same—but I think that might make it even better. Let’s do this together!”

I’m actually so tempted to put this whole thing into Chat GPT to make it better but trying to stay authentic sooo….. 

What can I say, “Let’s dive in!” (Chat GPT humour).

It’s so good to “see” you again!  Do comment below and say hi… if you want to!

– Jenna from Oh Natural 🙂