Town Talk | Real advice, real results: Inside Natural Solutions

Last Tuesday, I sat with Ian Grose — and we talked.

It was 35°C outside, but we were comfortable with our mugs of iced coffee — so we talked.

We talked about everything from COVID to council.

We talked about some of Shepp’s missed opportunities, particularly the International Village.

We talked about some of our past chief executives, with me assuring Ian that our current one is a winner.

Perhaps it was because we have both been around Shepparton for a long time.

Perhaps it was because I had just come from a funeral and didn’t have my headspace in place.

However, time was flying by, and I had barely asked a question.

I finally remembered that I had two reasons for contacting him.

One had been the ongoing success and survival of Natural Solutions.

The past five years have been rugged ones for retail, and yet Ian’s Shepparton and Bendigo stores are both still there, apparently doing well.

Both have strong opposition from pharmacies and minor opposition from supermarkets.

It can’t have been easy.

Natural Solutions has been in City Central (corner of High and Maude Sts) for 35 years, although the name of the shopping centre has changed a couple of times.

Fountain Health Foods has been more than surviving in Bendigo for 15 years.

It gets a little complicated here because ‘Fountain Health’ was originally competition — with Ian running a Natural Solutions store at the Bendigo Marketplace.

In 2010, Ian purchased Fountain Health — keeping the name and closing the Marketplace store.

So, he has had a presence in the Bendigo market for 28 years all up.

So, back to my question.

With so much competition in both marketplaces, what’s the secret to survival?

I thought I knew at least part of the answer — because the stores in both cities have an outstanding reputation for helpful and knowledgeable service.

I was familiar with the Shepparton store and had made some phone calls to my Bendigo contacts.

“The staff,” I was told, “are wonderful and know what they are talking about.”

Ian calls it “real advice”, and it is valuable to the customer.

It’s what they need.

But what happened during COVID?

(Another question! Now I’m getting started.)

Well!

Ian had let his staff decide and the Bendigo people had closed the store.

However, in Shepp, the ladies had a couple of ideas.

They took orders and made kerbside deliveries.

That means, in a quiet High St, it was possible for customers to park while the staff delivered products to the waiting cars — or delivered to homes.

Whatever it took!

It was becoming clear to me that, having the wisdom to select the right staff, Ian allows them to make many of the decisions and is frequently off doing other things.

However, he hasn’t been on holidays for the past couple of decades — he has been a busy man.

He has other business interests and, for 10 years, was greenkeeper for the tennis club.

The history

Although very rarely in his stores, Ian has a history in the industry.

In 1980, he opened Kernel Health Foods in Wyndham St, opposite the post office at that time.

A substantial part of this business was takeaway food — healthy food, of course.

Ian reckons he was the first to introduce Shepp to wraps — and he is probably right.

During this period, he was heavily involved in tennis and in the administration of the badminton association.

Doubtless due to his love of racquet games, he then opened a store called Dr Racquet in the shopping centre (then called something else).

During his four years in this business, he walked — every day — past the natural health store in the complex.

It was struggling.

A chain of stores had been established by the Sanitarium Health Food Company, which decided to sell.

A keen gentleman had bought 38 of the stores, including Shepparton’s.

It eventuated that the purchase of so many stores had left him short of capital to keep them running — because there was a massive and obvious decline.

Ian had a chat with the Shepparton staff, who were concerned about their jobs, and bought the Shepparton store in 1990.

It has been operating — offering real advice — ever since.

My second reason for talking to Ian

In a recent television ad, Ian mentions damaged health “due to the things we had to do”.

This interests me because I am one of many who claims an illness connected to the COVID vaccine.

I asked him about it, and he said there was now a category of illnesses labelled as Vaccine Injury.

In his opinion, some of the complaints he has come across are unlikely to have been caused by immunisation.

However, although difficult to prove, many appear to be connected to the vaccine.

I’ve been doing some more research — because of my direct interest and because most of the people I have spoken to have not reported their condition and don’t want to ‘make a fuss’.

It is difficult to find anything substantial — as the years go by.

The COVID-19 Vaccine Claims Scheme closed at the end of September last year.

However, had you claimed your $1000, you were eligible if you had one of seven conditions attributed to AstraZeneca and four conditions if your vaccine was Pfizer or Moderna.

(Only one condition was eligible for all three vaccines.)

Back to Ian — he was reluctant to have the vaccine.

However, when his Shepparton staff decided on immunisation, to enable them to keep working (and to prevent him colliding with the law), he took what he considered to be a risk, to support his people.

My conclusion

Usually, when time has run out on a chat, I have a clear idea about how to proceed with Town Talk.

However, in this case, we had talked so much, about so many subjects, some of it inappropriate for publication, that I said as much to Ian.

“I’ve got no idea what to write about.”

He just laughed!

(He is a very relaxed human being!)

I needed to check some of this content with him.

One thing in particular was puzzling me.

Why did I feel as if I had known Ian for a long time?

I couldn’t remember meeting or conversing with him in the past.

He had similar feelings about me and said he remembered me being at the newspaper when I was more active in the business community.

And, for a short time, he lived two doors down the street from us.

I guess his is what I call a ‘Shepparton face’ — and I suppose mine is, too.

I see ‘Shepparton faces’ all around me, frequently — and quite often, we smile at one another.

To me, this indicates that many of us have been around our community for a long time.

We mightn’t know a name, but we recognise one another.

I thank Ian for his time, his cheek, his humour — and his contribution to the good health of two cities.

Next week we’ll talk history.

Thursday night was exactly what Tiger supporters, like me, needed.

It is going to be an interesting season!

Please take care of yourselves, and may it be easy, my friends.

Marnie

Email: towntalk@sheppnews.com.au

Letter: Town Talk. The News. P.O. Box 204. Shepparton 3631.

Phone: Text or call 0409 317 187