We sat down with Essential Wholesale’s head Buyer, Michelle Falls, to inquire about the process of carefully sourcing the quality ingredients for sale and in products sold at Essential Wholesale & Labs.
Q: What factors do you consider when deciding where to source ingredients used + sold at Essential Wholesale?
A: Safety of the ingredients is my utmost concern. I also evaluate the vendor for performance, transparency, and their ability to provide documentation about ingredients. Ingredient efficacy is so important. Finally, I evaluate for factors related to environmental sustainability like the ingredient’s biodegradability and the earth’s renewable position for those ingredients. While obviously cost is always a consideration, if we can get a higher quality of an ingredient that we can trust, we will pay more. For example, our MSM is created and manufactured right here in the Pacific Northwest and cost a little more than MSM created and manufactured in China. We believe that it is of much higher quality and we know and trust the manufacturers of the USA MSM.
Q: Does Essential try to source from anywhere in particular?
A: We do. Essential tries to source our ingredients as close to our location in Portland, Oregon, as possible. Sadly, not everything can grow in these parts nor in the USA, so we do have to venture all over the world. We try to avoid countries with known ingredient deficiencies such as China, but even then, somethings are only available from China for the cosmetic world. If we have no choice other than to get from China, we will make sure to purchase from places with high standards and education behind them.
Q: Are there any ingredients you avoid?
A: Yes. I avoid any animal ingredients, or ingredients derived from petrol. I also avoid any ingredients that are harmful to the environment as much as I possibly can; looking at whether the crop is sustainable or not; looking at how the ingredient degrades into the earth or if it degrades the earth instead. We want to avoid as much landfill use as possible, so we also make sure that not only can we buy biodegradable, but that it is also not toxic to marine or land life. After all, nature is everywhere and we want to support, not kill it while we take from it. Some ingredients that many companies tout to be natural, are actually synthetic or lab created because if we were to take them from the earth, we would not be able to renew.
We continue to look for better alternatives and in situations like our necessary chelating agent we used Tetrasodium EDTA & have found a just as effective chelator in Tetrasodium Glutamate Diacetate. Editor’s note: For more information on this topic, please reference our blog post here: https://blog.essentialwholesale.com/edta/
Q: Where do you go for information about new ingredients?
A: I’m always seeking out new information about ingredients. I rely mostly on internet research, but have found that trade shows are great places to find out about up-and coming-ingredients. It’s also important to me to maintain a good relationships with the vendors, themselves, so that they can provide me with any new information. I have been in this industry and position for over 10 years, and vendors know what I need and will reach out to me and let me know when new, healthy, vegan, biodegradable and sustainable items are on the market.
