Why We Walk a Different Path: A Note on Black Friday (and Cyber Monday and Boxing Day, etc., etc.)
- Vanessa Lahey
- Nov 28
- 3 min read
Here at Herbal Path Australia, as the artificial allure of Black Friday (and the many sales thereafter) beckons, you’ll find our digital shelves intentionally quiet.
There will be no flashing GIFs luring you in for a quick fix via a limited-time (ish?) discount code. In a crowded marketplace using gimmick sales days to get your attention, we choose a different way: stillness and integrity.
The reason is simple, and it’s woven into the very fabric of who we are. We are not a retail business that simply transacts products. We are a small-scale farm and apothecary.
This is a crucial distinction. From the moment a mushroom spore meets its growing medium on our farm, to the careful hand-harvesting, meticulous, small-batch extraction and bottling process, every step is performed by us. This is the “bed to bottle” promise, and it’s a labour-intensive path we walk with purpose.
Another fundamental difference between us and “them” lies in our origins. Many herbal supplement businesses, at their core, are ecommerce retailers. That’s all. Their process begins with shopping for a finished product from a wholesale manufacturer.
They buy bottles by the thousand, designed to a generic specification, and their business’s primary role is marketing and sales. This model is built on volume and margin; discounting is a built-in strategy to clear inventory. The product is a transaction.
In stark contrast, our business is an organism, not a company. We are a small farm first, and have been for the past 13 years. We do not hire external labour to scale infinitely. The same hands that tend the Reishi and Lion’s Mane mushrooms (among other varieties and herbs) are the ones that bottle the final extracts. Our “inventory” is not a pallet of finished goods in a warehouse, but a living, growing ecosystem.
Because we are intimately involved in every single step, our costs are intrinsic and fixed; they are the costs of raw materials, time, and craft. There is no separate, cheaper “manufacturer cost” for us to fall back on.
We believe a potent, pure mushroom and herbal remedy is not a commodity to be discounted. It’s a culmination of time, care, and uncompromising quality. The organic substrates our mushrooms grow in are never on sale.
The glass bottles, the labels we carefully affix, and the mushrooms and herbs we tend do not suddenly become cheaper. Most importantly, the skilled, devoted labour that transforms a raw, potent mushroom or herb into your reliable remedy is our most valued asset, and it is never discounted.
Our margins are low and tight by design. We pour every resource back into the quality of our ingredients and the integrity of our processes. To discount our final product for no reason other than a sales phenomenon would be to devalue not just the product, but the very essence of our work. It would suggest that the care we put in has a fluctuating worth, and we fundamentally disagree.
Our business is built on a relationship with you, our customer, who seeks something authentic. You are not just buying a bottle of mushroom and herbal remedy that elevates your health; you are investing in a process you trust. You understand that true wellness isn’t found in a rushed purchase but in a consistently crafted remedy made with intention.
So, this Black Friday, while other wellness retailers mindlessly attempt to cash-in on this ridiculous consumer-fest, we invite you to pause. We will be here, as always, farming our mushrooms and herbs, crafting our remedies with the same unwavering standards, and offering them at a price that honestly reflects their true, non-negotiable cost.
Thank you for supporting a small farm and for understanding that some things - like purity, potency, and principle - are truly priceless.
With gratitude,
Vanessa & Jahdi
(which is the entire team at Herbal Path Australia)
