History
Shop Naturally was founded in 2009 by Joanne Swadling (formerly Joanne Musgrave). Joanne was a professional web designer and e-commerce was still very much in its infancy in Australia. After creating over a dozen online stores for clients, Joanne was on the hunt for a niche to create her own e-commerce business. The need for natural cleaning products and her inability to find them in local stores lead to the start of Shop Naturally.
Late 2009, the dangers of bpa in both baby bottles and water bottles prompted Joanne to do some product sourcing and quickly climbed to the top of Google’s rankings for bpa free water bottles. In January 2010, Shop Naturally sold over $50,000 worth of stainless steel water bottles for back to school and then the store took on a life of its own. Shop Naturally became her web agency’s biggest client and eventually she transitioned full time to running the store.
For 12 months, Shop Naturally was run from the spare bedroom and dining room of Joanne’s rental property. 12 months later she was able to afford to purchase a home and moved the business into the garage and 3 other rooms. In less than 12 months, the business grew to the point where it had to be moved to a warehouse in July 2011.
Privately Owned
Shop Naturally is privately owned by Joanne. She makes all the buying decisions and oversees all the content on the website. The integrity of the types of products Shop Naturally sells and the way the products are portrayed on the website and in social media are important to Joanne, so you might find a few products missing, and a few quirky additions you might not see elsewhere. Joanne lives with Chronic Fatigue Syndrome and Multiple Chemical Sensitivities and has significantly improved her health in the last 2 years. You can read more about Joanne’s story here >>
Industry Leaders
In 2017, Shop Naturally was featured in series 4 of Foxtel’s business show Industry Leaders. It may or may not be apparent, but on the day of filming, Joanne’s fatigue was high, she lost her voice twice and had to stop filming to recover. That is Joanne playing the piano. She is a classically trained pianist and the reason we have a Musical Instruments for Music Therapy category in our store, which no-one else in the health & wellbeing space has.
2022 Projects
2022 saw the launch of three major projects. The Happy Sparrow is Shop Naturally’s home brand and is focused on eco friendly products with minimal or no packaging. Our Music Category is bringing the world of easy to learn musical instruments for music therapy at a time when stress is at an all time high.
The third and largest project of 2022 saw Shop Naturally team up with Brisbane Magento Development agency One Click Media to completely overhaul the website to elevate the shopping experience from the first click right through to the custom coded checkout experience for the Eco Rewards program.