New to Edgars: Greenland - Treating your senses naturally

The second new and exciting brand to hit Edgars and Red Square stores soon is Greenland. This brand's focus is mainly on bath and body ranges and comes all the way from Holland thanks to its founder Jan-Willem Van Kempen who has been growing the brand since 1990.

Read my post on King and Queens here which is also a new brand to hit your Edgars shelves.

I received two Greenland products in my goodie bag which, after testing, I handed to my sister to enjoy. She was over the moon!

The first is a lip balm from their "Balm and Butter" range. 

Greenland's Pomegranate Lip Balm

I received the delicious pomegranate fruity scent lip balm which smells pretty good. This is an all natural product using only the best organic ingredients. It contains no parabens, no artificial colorants, just natural butters (Shea and Cocoa butter) and essential oils!

The one thing about I am not crazy about when it comes to natural butters is that is it very temperature reliant. In winter the lip balm will be as hard as a rock and you will have to run the balm across your lips a few times before any product transfers onto your skin. The other extreme is if it's hot, the whole thing melts in your hand bag. (this is me being very picky though)

Otherwise, this lip balm felt good on my lips and did its job pretty well.

"The pomegranate is a bomb of nutrition. It contains vitamin B, C, potassium to regulate your heart rate and blood pressure, and antioxidants. Pomegranate has proved to have an antibacterial effect and it also aids digestion." - Source

The second product I received to test out is the Papaya-Lemon hand cream from Greenland's "Fruit Emotions" range.

This hand cream was a dream to apply. It has a slight water-like texture to it which makes it ideal for the warmer months to come our way, where you would prefer not sweating under a thick layer of lotion.

I also love the odd fragrance combinations that they have in their range. This Papaya and Lemon scent was strange but refreshing. The other combinations they have in this range are Grapefruit-Ginger, Mint-Lavender, Coconut-Tangerine and Lime-Vanilla. Their boldness to try scents that could potentially fail terribly, shows that Greenland takes risks to be different and offer a unique product to their consumers.

Downside, their packaging is a little sensitive. I dropped it by accident and it made an awful dent on the side, as if I had just dropped a bowling ball on top of it. If you purchase their products as a gift, please handle with care and wrap them with extra reinforcements.

 Greenland has three more ranges other than the two I mentioned above.

Pure and White

"All pure and White items are natural and organic and contain more than 98% ingredients from their origin". Their unitque scent combinations are Bulgarian Rose & Patchouli, Italian Lime & Vanilla, French Lavendar & Rosemary and Cotton Flower & White Lotus.

Milky

"Milky offers natural body care with the benefit of creamy, soft and silky "milks". these milky combinations are Almond milk-Lotus, Coconut Milk-Lime, Yogurt-Cucumber and Rice Milk-Vanilla.

Fruit Exracts

"Greenland Fruit Extracts offers fabulous natural body care with the added pleasure of 100% natural fruit extracts". The fruits available in this range are Apple, Raspberry, Mango and Papaya.

If you think this is a brand worth trying out (which it is) view more by visiting Greenland's website and Facebook page.

"Old" fashioned shopping

I wanted to share a little snippet of my thoughts with all of my supportive readers. It dawned on me that if you have been reading my posts for the past year, you must like what I say about and how I say it. (Warning, this post contains useless rant)

This online shopping fiasco ticks me off a little bit. For people like me, who aren’t 100% confident in the system, especially in SA, and don’t feel like giving some else the chance to mess their order up, I prefer shopping at the actual store where you can feel, sniff, lick, cuddle and test the actual product/s.

Since online stores have firmly been put in place, I am finding most often than I’d like, that there is scarcely anything on the shelves these days. After browsing through categories, finding what I like, driving to the store with cold hard cash to purchase it, I get unbearably irritated when it’s not there and the assistants say “but you get it online”. Do you honestly think that after going to all that effort, I’ll leave the store a happier person because I now have to wait 3 days for the bloody thing to be sent to me!? No…just no!

There is a point to all of this.

I was window shopping at The Grove Mall in Pretoria and popped into the Edgars store. I knew exactly what I wanted. Gosh’s Matte top coat. I saw it on Edgars’ new online store but didn’t feel like paying shipping fees for one small bottle of polish (this is also how online stores catch you out). I couldn’t believe my eyes when I saw the polish in the cosmetics section. I grabbed it and walked quite briskly to the payment counter, clenching the bottle tightly in my hands (I was picturing one of those black Friday scenes when there’s only 3 products but 20 ladies want it. Dramatic I know). I paid and left. It was such a quick and painless experience.

This made my day and restored my faith in stores in general. High five to Edgars! I really hope they continue to stock products in Malls etc. and don’t rely on online sales too much. I can picture sharing stories with my great grandchildren about the times we used to use actual money and shop at actual stores. Savor the days of old fashioned shopping, they seem to becoming scarce.

Red Square understands the 'Digital Diva'

I received a really unexpected gift from Red Square store containing tons of samples. I was a tad confused but after reading the note it came with, I waited with anticipation to receive more details and once I did, I liked what I saw!

I'm not one for online shopping myself but I do admire Red Square's new online sampling program. You get to choose three samples when making an order online which will give you the opportunity to try products out before your next purchase (just like the ones in the picture above). This proves that they understand the digital diva. We want to know what products to commit to by testing it out first!

You're probably asking yourself, "what am I going to do with three tiny samples?". Let me tell you ladies, end of the month, just before pay day, I live off samples! It's just the way we get beauty on a budget.

Image provided by Red Square PR

You will also get the opportunity to review/comment on products you have purchased from Red Square to create a community of ladies who help each other with shopping advice.

Gone are the days of ladies knowing less than men. Nowadays women are dominating the social media and online shopping platforms.

Keep an eye out on www.redsquare.co.za to find out how you can get a piece of the cake!!