A Tradition of Quality for 145 Years

For nearly a decade and a half, Watkins has been producing products that have stood the test of time.

 

One of the most thrilling moments in the Broadway musical “Fiddler on the Roof” is when the main character belts out the song, “Tradition.” It tells of the rich history of his family and the roots of his religion that have helped create a special bond through the years.

So too it is with Watkins. Many other companies have come and gone during the last 150 years, but Watkins continues to serve generation after generation with the type of products that have kept customers wanting more.

Back in the horse and buggy days, early Watkins salesmen would fill their wagons with a growing array of quality products and peddle them to farms throughout the Midwest. Today, Watkins men and women use the Internet to grow their businesses from coast to coast and into Canada.

It’s through this kind of international reach that consultants continue to achieve record-breaking results. When our Watkins team was recognized at the 145^th Watkins conference in Winona last month, we were well aware that it was our involvement with Internet marketing that helped bring about such a great year for us.

As all of our consultants and customers know, this has been a challenging time since the Watkins corporate website is being reconstructed. With the website partially down, many of the previous functions – such as purchasing products through our All Natural Country Store website – has become impossible. Therefore, many sales are currently being taken over the phone by Alan Lukes, our country store’s lead manager.

Despite this challenge, we were still able to record more than $2,000 in sales during the month of July, primarily because of the need to restock our country store shelves after a series of public events. They began with the local Big Bear Elk’s Lodge Peddlers Market held throughout the Independence Day weekend, and continued every Tuesday when we manned our weekly Big Bear Farmer’s Market booth.

“Even though the volume in online sales dropped significantly during July, we realize that direct public contact with our customers is an important part of our business,” according to Alan. “When given the opportunity to taste and smell our gourmet food products, or feel the soothing sensation of our body care and apothecary products, customers respond by making a purchase. It all goes back to those early days of Watkins when products were sold door-to-door or in a Watkins general store. It’s a tradition that grows stronger with every passing year, and accounts for many of our returning customers.”

Keep Cool This Summer

With Watkins

While temps climb across the country, here’s some suggested products that will keep you and your customers cool, calm and collected through July and August.

Sure, you and your customers may be grumbling about the stifling heat, but it’s also your opportunity to make hay while the sun shines.

When was the last time you promoted a soothing plunge into a cool bathtub, made even more luxurious with the introduction of Lavender Bath Salts. The aroma is intoxicating, and your customer will tell her friends about the experience, which will snowball into even bigger sales.

There’s also the cool feeling that comes when applying the White Cream Liniment to sooth away those aches and pains that come when over-exerting oneself trying to get all those flowering plants in the ground in one day. Shower them with cool water in the early morning or evening so that you don’t rush to do the impossible. Your back will thank you for it.

Keeping cool also means staying out of the kitchen, or at least keeping the oven turned off when preparing snacks and meals. While some like the spicy hot taste that comes from the Blazin’ Cajun Snack and Dip Seasoning, the flavor that tops the charts during the summer months has always been the cool Cucumber and Dill or the Garlic and Dill. Who needs to bake chicken in the oven when a chicken salad made with pre-cooked diced chicken makes the perfect base on which to top with some of the new grinder seasonings, and a light dressing made with Watkins Grapeseed Oil and the dip mixes.

All it takes is a little bit of advance planning and ingenuity to tackle those sizzling temperatures thanks to Watkins and its fabulous product lines. You’ll have your customers cooled down in no time.   Feel free to take a look at our entire product line at http://www.AllNaturalCountryStore.com.

New Products

A Growing List of Grinders

A Lemon Pepper Grinder and a Garlic Sea Salt Grinder are two of the latest Watkins new grind-it-yourself products.

 When it was announced last month in the Watkins kitchen that the 145-year-old company was bringing back its lemon and pepper spice combination at the Watkins 2013 Open House Celebration, there was a round of applause from the audience. Why? The powder was very popular product for many consultant customers. But product developers had something up their sleeve. They had plans to make it better. They did so by bringing back the popular spice combination in a Lemon Pepper grinder format. The result just became available, along with another new combination that is bound to be equally popular – a Garlic Sea Salt grinder.

These two new grinders are the latest in a line of grinders that now include a variety of some 10 glass containers. You can’t beat the fresh flavor from a grinder. The simple way of dispensing their content has helped customers season to taste. And this has added to their popularity.

Here’s how the Watkins website describes this growing grinder trend:

“Satisfy your craving for seasonings with Watkins grinders. These disposable grinders have a unique, eye-catching design, and the top-quality ingredients inside will please your palate. The grinders are convenient and easy to use – just twist to grind.”

Now, you are probably asking yourself, “Self -- How can I use these two unique flavor combinations Simple! In fact, we made it easy for you by digging through the vast collection of Watkins recipes to find one that calls for all four of grinder ingredients – lemon, pepper, garlic and sea salt!

Spice Scented Grilled Chicken Breasts

Ingredients

2 ½ to 3 tbsp of lemon juice

Freshly ground Watkins Lemon Black Pepper to taste

1 tsp of Watkins Garlic and Sea Salt Grinder

½ tsp of Watkins Curry Powder

¼ tsp of Watkins Cinnamon

4 skinless, boneless chicken breast halves

Directions

Combine lemon juice with all the spice ingredients; mix well. Add chicken and turn to coat all sides. Allow to marinate at room temperature for 15 minutes. Grill or broil chicken for 5 minutes per side, or until cooked through.

The product number for the Lemon and Pepper Grinder is Item #0053, while the Garlic and Sea Salt grinder is Item #0039. Simply go to www.AllNaturalCountryStore.com, and shop for “Grinders.” Shop under “Herbs and Spices” for your Curry Powder and Cinnamon ingredients. Get your order in now before too many bloggers discover this recipe, and these hot grinders go onto a waiting list!  ~

A Way to Give Back to Veteran Families

On Memorial Day, we pause to honor all those special heroes who donned a uniform to serve our country.

They say every man is more handsome in a uniform. But this is a fellow I’m particularly proud of every Memorial Day. He’s my dad, Leon Gurzenski, who died when I was 11. He was in World War I – the “Great War to end all wars.” Then along came a tyrant by the name of Adolph Hitler, who brought about World War II. The U.S. has had its share of fallen heroes with a series of conflicts leading up to the current combat in Afghanistan. So many men and women have sacrificed their lives so that we can continue to live in freedom. Just one day seems terribly inadequate to honor them all. But honor them we do, not just those who have died, but those in active service today, as well as thousands of veterans, who returned with permanent physical and mental scars of their time in battle. All those medals acknowledging their bravery isn’t enough either.

Those of us at the All Natural Country Store, proud distributors of J.R. Watkins’ 250+ “made-in-the-USA” products, try to do a bit more. The Watkins Company has been around since 1868. That’s 145 years if you care to count. That’s long before my dad was old enough to fit in that sailor’s uniform. He enlisted in the U.S. Navy as soon as possible, and served until he returned from overseas with a broken back and an honorable discharge. He lived with back pain for the rest of his life, dying prematurely at the age of 60. As I said, I’m very proud and eternally grateful that he was my dad, and served his country so long and proud, even though his life was cut short because of that service.

Because Watkins has been around through all those wars, many of those wives and husbands left at home while their spouses fought on foreign soil had to do what they could to make ends meet. The perfect part-time job for them was as members of the J.R. Watkins family of sales people. Some of them steered horse-drawn wagons across the plains. Later, many of them drove some of Henry Ford’s first models from farm-to-farm across this country’s heartland. Today’s Watkins sales team can be found at farmers markets and peddlers markets across the country. In fact, we managers of the All Natural Country Store “worked” the Big Bear Lake Elk’s Club Peddlers Market this Memorial Day weekend. We use the word “worked” loosely because of all the neighbors and holiday weekend guests, who are drawn to this ideal mountain lake community covered with pine trees, and only a short drive east of San Diego, Orange County and Los Angeles. Frequent customers have become friends, the kind you can talk with over the back fence and catch up on their busy lives. We extend an additional 10% off the retail price to all veterans during the Memorial Weekend.  That’s on top of the 25% we extend to anyone who joins our Watkins All Natural Country Store Wholesale Shoppers Club for just $39.95.

I can’t help thinking that somewhere up there dad is looking down proudly, not only because we have established our own Watkins business, but because we have helped many other veterans and surviving spouses build their own home-based Watkins businesses. That’s the kind of reward that we consider priceless.

The Psychology of Running Your Own Business

I was skeptical at first, but after some five years, people around me have seen a real personality adjustment.

Who would have thought? You hear all those coaxing attributes of being in business for yourself. You get to set your own hours. No need to report to anyone other than your own spouse, perhaps. Time to take your own vacations, napping in the afternoon if you feel like it, and feeling good about it, too. 

Well, almost. You just might find that those first few years can require ‘round the clock work hours while you develop a firm foundation for your firm. Every time you want to sit down and rest, or take that afternoon nap, you may be thinking, “What should I be doing right now to keep the business on track? Should I have a website up and running by now? What about facebook, Twitter or Linkedin? Lots of stuff to juggle in the air at one time, even though your office has been set up on your former dining room table as long as you can remember. Eating off TV trays in front of a flickering screen seems to be the only entertainment you felt comfortable in taking. 

To achieve success in any business, you have to do more than just try. You really must want to succeed. You get just as much from a new business as you put into it. If it was really so easy, everyone would be doing it. Then why go into business if it can bring about all those pressures? Just one word -- Independence. I think of that every Independence Day, even though that’s a working weekend when the Big Bear Elks Club Peddler’s Market can result in high sales from holiday vacationers on the mountain. But we can rest on Monday, when all those other 9-to-5ers have to rush back to their cubicles. Remember those days? I don’t miss them for a minute. 

Each year of business goes better, runs smoother, with a lot less stress. The recovering economy is a factor, of course. I’ll never forget our first Watkins conference, when we were called to the podium and honored for being the 6^th leading associates in the entire country and Canada. We were even asked to be on the program to tell how we became managers in four months, and seemed to increase our numbers every month thereafter. You must be doing something right when you quality to be on the All Star Team, the highest producers in the company, every year since joining Watkins. We felt like the little engine that could was making some progress. 

Such success breeds self-confidence.  I like to tell how Alan dragged me to that first Watkins event kicking and screaming, “We’re in the middle of a recession.  

Alan Lukes & David Gurzenski

Are you crazy with all this talk about starting our own business now when all the cards are against us?”  But every year got better, particularly after running a small ad on Google, and suddenly we were a national company, international, in fact, when you count in our Canadian team members.  

When Alan gets a call from a perspective recruit now, he can rattle off the many benefits of being associated with Watkins, and the amazing compensation program he considers the best in the business. For me, keeping tabs on the facebook page, pushing out these blog postings, and studying ways to market our business – all amazing activities that I love doing since that’s the area is which my education was based. 

Naturally, when people come up to me and ask, “How’s business?” a big grin crosses my face, and I truly can say “Great!” Do I worry? Of course, to a degree, we all do. But I safely can say that success has brought many pleasures, but probably the greatest one is seeing that guy in the mirror every morning, and telling him, “You got your own business, and everything else doesn’t really feel like a major issue any more. I like being my own boss! I’m happier. I can joke about myself, and really enjoy meeting new people and telling them the Watkins story. After this long with an organization, learning the corporate culture, as they say, becomes second nature. 

Alan Lukes and David Gurzenski, Co-Managers of the All Natural Country Store

Care to talk about it with someone who knows a thing or two about launching your own Watkins business?  Just call 888-881-5232. Alan can tell you how supportive your Watkins managers can be so you develop more confidence in hanging out your own shingle. You will build your own self-esteem in knowing you CAN build a Watkins part-time business to supplement your family’s income. ~ David Gurzenski

Protecting America’s
Youngest Citizens

Baby Products line shows Watkins growing emphasis for all natural products for every age.

Let’s face it. There’s nothing like a newborn baby to make most people go ooooo and aaahhh! And for good reason. These young ones depend on their moms and dads to protect them from all the challenges that life will soon hand them. Probably one of the major decisions parents have to make early on is the type of products will be used to introduce their young ones to the feel and smell of a life around them.

Enter J.R. Watkins. This grandfatherly figure introduced America to a new way of doing business. One of the few images we have of J.R. is this photo of the founder of the company with his newly born granddaughter. While Watkins had yet to develop actual products for babies, he was aware of mothers and fathers desire to provide a bubble in which their young children could remain safe and secure. In the beginning, Watkins realized that all natural products – be in the food products line or the body care products line – should be a crucial element in all products coming off the company’s conveyer belts.

Fast-forward to 2012 when that same philosophy brought about the introduction of a product off-shoot dedicated to babies. Each element of the line focuses on a specific need voiced by parents in focus groups before those products were unveiled.

 
Of course, one of the most recognizable names in baby products is Johnson & Johnson. Those individuals in the Watkins Research & Development Develop realized that they had to go beyond what was already on the market to fill in the gaps that needed to be addressed. While the actual type of products is similar, the Watkins line focused on the need for all natural ingredients.

As a result, the Baby Oil, Soothing Baby Balm, Baby Wash and Baby Lotion are completely all natural in their content. Parents have the same 30-day, 100% all-money back guarantee that these products will not cause any negative reaction to their young sons and daughters. If you have any specific question regarding these our Baby Line products, please contact the managers of the All Natural Store at 888-881-7372. If they can’t answer your questions, they have contacts at the corporate office that can. ~

Earth Day Expands to Earth Week, and for Good Reason

Companies like Watkins realize the bottom line isn’t always so important if it means leaving big footprints on its way to financial success.

As many know, this is Earth Week. Isn’t it appropriate that organizers selected springtime of each year to hold this observance to protect the earth? Those of us fortunate to live in sections of this country such as Big Bear, California, are stuck by the natural beauty of the world around us.

This year marks the 43rd observance Earth Day in the United States. Organized by Sen. Gaylord Nelson (D-Wis.), the first Earth Day in 1970 saw an estimated 20 million Americans demonstrate in support of the environment. By 2012, more than one billion people in 192 countries took part in Earth Day festivities. It was only natural (pun intended) that the one day be expanded to a full week.

One of the reasons that attracts Big Bear residents to this bit of paradise here on earth is the wonders of nature all around us.  It’s the same reason – among others – that attracted us to the Watkins way of running a business.

The need for companies to practice “green” manufacturing is more important than ever. The second decade of the 21st century – marked by America’s largest oil spill, the hottest year on record for the continental U.S and the bitterly divisive Keystone pipeline proposal -- has already confirmed the growing relevance of environmental issues in America.

 

Ever since it came into being some 145 years ago, Watkins has been a pioneer in natural living, utilizing the finest natural ingredients in all its products. The company continues its commitment to its customers and the environment by implementing processes that reduce waste and conserve energy. Together, Watkins top executives believe we can make a positive impact on our environment.

Here’s what Watkins currently does to reduce waste and make a positive impact on the earth:

• Offer a full line of plant based home care products that are free of pollutants and biodegradable.
• Offer a full line of USDA certified 100% Organic Herbs and Spices and All-Natural Pure Extracts.
• Adhere to a strict paper, plastic, and aluminum recycling program.
• Utilize biodegradable packing materials.
• Use soy-based ink in our printed marketing materials.
• Employ e-communications and encourage customers, Consultants and vendors to obtain information online instead of in printed form.
• Gravity fed filling processes: Watkins fills its bulk dry mixes using time-tested gravity feeds. This allows conserve energy conservation that would normally be used to power a pneumatic or conveyor system.
• Use lighter weight product packaging. Simply reducing our plastic bottle weight for various products has saved thousands of pounds of plastic from waste.
• Encourage vendors to use renewable energy and cut waste.
• Utilize Lean business and manufacturing practices to help eliminate waste and streamline operations

Regulatory agencies have taken notice of these strides made by Watkins as dozens of products continue being reformulated to achieve that 95% mark or better so they, too, can be classified as “All Natural” by the Natural Products Association. No wonder more and more products are rolling off the Watkins conveyer belts with the word “Naturals” as part of their name.

To purchase Watkins products go to:

http://www.AllNaturalCountryStore.com