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26th NEWSLETTER

Written by Annie not Elena!

AN “ALTERNATIVE” JOB

In April 1999, I answered an advert in the local village post office and came to work for Elena Schalburg as her cleaner one day a week. I had just left my job as a Nursery Manager in Tunbridge Wells, a demanding job, in which I was responsible for the day-to-day care of forty children and babies under five years old along with sixteen staff. I wanted to be free from the pressures and responsibilities of constant battles with the ‘ system’ and earn enough money to pay the mortgage, so cleaning for other people was very appealing at the time!

The first few months I spent with Elena, I did her cleaning whilst she did whatever she did - I had no idea - I was too burnt out to even ask. When her assistant left Elena offered me the chance to help her in the business producing a handmade range of Natural Products for eczema, predominantly Infantile Atopic Eczema - so that’s what she did! It was her life - she ate, breathed and slept eczema. Children, I knew quite a bit about, and in the past, I’d been a chef in my own restaurant so all of a sudden, children and cooking came together, even if at that time it was only for one day a week. Cleaning was beginning to wear a bit thin!

Elena talked about her regime for best results of controlling eczema. It consisted of:

• Trinity Soap/ Shampoo to cleanse the skin and take care of the bacteria and inflammation
• Bath and Body oil for lubrication
• Day Cream Special and Night Cream Extra for moisturisation and restoration
• Eureka Cream for stubborn areas and flare- ups

It is still the same today.

She also showed me letters and cards she had received over the years from grateful clients whose children had benefited from Elena’s range of natural products by their eczema being greatly reduced or completely cleared (I thought secretly she had written them herself!). Then I started to answer the telephone and talk to clients, open the mail and read and heard for myself the genuine success stories of how whole families’ lives had been transformed because of their belief in a regime of products made by a nurse from Denmark, who supported and advised them - did not give up on any of the desperate people who came her way.

In those days it was still word of mouth that brought new clients - the Internet and her website were still a few years away. I wish that I had heard of Elena’s Nature Collection in my former career as one in five children suffer from eczema, which meant that my office medical cabinet always contained at least four or five tubes of steroid preparations to be applied on a daily basis to children in my care, some as young as four months old. Scary now, but at the time, I, like the parents, had no knowledge of anything different and totally relied on the expertise of the professionals who prescribed those steroid/cortisone creams and greasy emollients.

Things progressed and by 2001 both Elena and myself took the plunge and I joined Elena’s Nature Collection four days a week, working 9am - 5pm sometimes longer depending on what we were working on that day. At this point we also had the garage converted into a laboratory with equipment designed by Elena’s new man - Keith - a mechanical engineer (in fact, a bit of a genius) who designed and built the most amazing streamlined workshop, which enabled us to produce in larger quantities without compromising the quality of the finished products. In fact, to Elena’s elation, the quality was enhanced by producing in this way, i.e. producing it in a vessel with a water jacket enabling it to be heated through slowly and evenly instead of cooking on the Aga. Never be set in your ways as Keith proved her wrong! (She was so scared that larger production would change the quality of the product).

The creation of the website in 2001 opened an even wider door - we began to receive orders worldwide from as far away as Australia and even more recently from countries we had never even heard of such as Guam! And just when we thought it couldn’t get any better, some of our clients managed to get their products through the NHS because of the co-operation and interest of GPs in an alternative to steroids and the range was now known and approved by the Pricing Prescriptions Authority.

Two years later this too is expanding at a fantastic rate, through the patience and perseverance of individual clients, with all the relevant information and support from the fast growing team at Elena’s Nature Collection. We have even managed to get Elena’s Nature Collection listed on EMIS ( which is the software programme used by 50% of GPs.)

Expansion has been organic, i.e. slow but sure. (Elena always compares her products with vintage grapes – not sour grapes!) In November 2003 Elena and her genius (he has now built us an even BIGGER laboratory) moved to Woodmans Farm to allow the business to grow. The whole team are dedicated to the belief that skin conditions such as eczema and psoriasis can be treated the Natural Way without the use of cortisone /steroids and greasy emollients, and that each individual has the right to a choice of alternative treatments.

In fact, it is Elena’s belief that there are always different choices and possibilities in every situation in life. I have to say, I quite agree!

Annie, (Elena) and all of us at ENC!