Garden Botanika: Natural Products with Great Service to Boot!
Written: Apr 12 '04 (Updated Apr 12 '04)
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I was introduced to Garden Botanika products due to one of the evil promotions at drugstore.com where they gave me a free spa kit with a purchase of some dollar amount. Included in the kit was a small bottle of Garden Botanika's Almond Cream Body Lotion, and an addict was born.
~&~ The Basics ~&~
Garden Botanika sells natural products including skin care, cosmetics, and spa products. Their products are not tested on animals, contain no talc or lanolin, use no sodium laureth sulfate in their cleansers, and have no fragrance in their cosmetics.
The Garden Botanika Online Store has a clean, pleasing design that is very simple to navigate. Product links are divided into categories of Skin Care, Body Care, Cosmetics, Fragrance, Home Spa, Gifts, and Clearance. A navigation section along the top on every page includes links for Garden Club (more below), My Account, Shopping Basket, Catalog Request, Catalog Quick Shop, and Email Signup. A search box is also available at all times.
Shopping for products is very simple on this site. Colors for cosmetics are shown with large circular color swatches. Product categories have drop-down menus that help you navigate right to the products you are searching for without having to page through tons of products.
Garden Botanika Online Store has three shipping options: regular (arrives within 6-10 business days), 2nd day (2-5 business days), and overnight (arrives next business day). Gift wrapping service is provided for $5.95, or you can have them include gift wrapping product with your order for you to wrap the gift yourself for anywhere from $2.00 to $4.00. Payment is accepted via Visa, MasterCard, American Express, and Discover.
~&~ My Experience ~&~
Of course, I can never just order one item from any sort of beauty supplies web site, and I had a veritable field day at Garden Botanika Online Store. For starters, for $10.00 per year, you can join their Garden Club, which entitles you to a 10% discount any time you shop there, 20% off on the first Tuesday of every month, and 30% off during the week of your birthday. So of course, I joined right up after calculating that even with two orders on a first Tuesday, I would save more than that.
The second great thing that I discovered about the Garden Botanika Online Store is that they offer samples of many of their popular cosmetics. At $3.00 each, or 4 for $8.00, you can try out products you might not want to risk at full price. Factor in the Garden Club discount, and I was able to get four samples for $6.40, which arrived packaged in a neat vinyl envelope-style pouch which has ingredients and sizes on the back for all available samples. The samples are a very decent size for the money, and just perfect to get a good idea of whether or not you will like a product.
In my order, I purchased the Almond Cream Body Lotion and Almond Cream Body Mist, along with samples of the Vitamin E Lip Tint, Vitamin E Stick, Natural Balance Powder Foundation, and Luminzer Amber. The samples were in the pouch, and the pouch, body mist, and lotion were all wrapped individually in that nifty honeycomb-like paper wrapping that is easily recyclable. Also included was a small single-use sample of their Apple Blossom Body Lotion.
Shipping was very fast, especially considering that the Garden Botanika Online Store ships via UPS. I placed my order on a Tuesday (to get my first Tuesday of the month discount) and my order arrived the following Monday via regular shipping, which came to $5.50 for my entire order, very reasonable considering what other retailers charge.
~&~ Overall ~&~
Overall, shopping at the Garden Botanika Online Store was close to the perfect shopping experience, and I'm sure you'll be seeing deliveries from them showing up fairly regularly. And lookout for my next birthday week!
Recommended:
Yes
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Epinions.com ID:
pippadaisy
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Reviews written: 1086
Trusted by: 177 members
About Me:
Divorce seriously cuts into the amount of time for reviewing.
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