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The term "price
gouging" (Webster's Dictionary says: pricing above the market when no
alternative retailer is available) actually refers to a company that has a
monopoly over a single product and charges whatever prices they choose to charge
without worry of competition...such as oil. If only a single company has the
product, and they set an unreasonable price, making it as high as the market
will bear; that is "price gouging."
BUT: It is a
free country with a free market. We certainly don't force ANY of our customers
to come to us, much less BUY from us. The internet is vast, with countless
shops, but we feel that we do it better, faster, and with more unique, high
quality products than anyone else. We sometimes look to those who we feel are
our closest competition, and make sure that we are in alignment with where the
market is at. If we can offer products at a lower price than we have in the
past, due to a bumper crop or a different supplier who offers us a better
product at a lower price....then we pass the savings onto our customers.
If every company has an equal
chance to do what we have managed to do, rising to become one of the top venders
on the net, then how on Earth could we possibly be guilty of "price gouging" as
a few allege?
Unfortunately, most of our products ARE plants...and plant availability is not
only often ruled by Mother Nature, but there are often not as many of them or
material from them such as flowers to supply the demand for them. If we have a
very limited supply of certain products, such as our Blue Lotus Absolute
Oil...we have to raise the price to lower demand; it's a cornerstone of the free
market system.
So, what I am trying to get at is this: I started my shop from nothing, built on
my passion for the plants and other products I offer the public. I started the
business in my back bedroom, and built it steadily from there, running my
business, as I said, from the perspective of what I would want from it as a
customer...like a human at the end of the phone, clear images and descriptions,
low prices, fast shipping, high quality products. I formed my own relationships
with suppliers I had to find myself over several years of research and hard
work.
ANYONE ELSE
in this country and almost any other HAVE AN EQUAL OPPORTUNITY to do the exact
same thing we did!
The reason I
began this shop is because I was tired of paying exorbitant prices to shops that
I felt were charging far too much for what they were offering. I was also tied
of never getting replies to my e-mails, and waiting for several weeks for any
product that I ordered. My shop was built on my desire to treat my customers the
way I wished to be treated, so we started small...never growing beyond what we
could handle, offering personalized service no matter how busy it gets around
here, while providing our unique same day shipping for any order placed before
3:00PM CST. We are not just a shop that is in it for the payoff, we put much of
the small profits we make into research for new products that no other shop has,
as well as a number of causes that we feel are doing things important to the
community.
You can read all about it here:
http://www.iamshaman.com/conservation.htm
What boggles my mind the most is
that one or two of our competitors have accused of of "price gouging" as well.
Our competitors should be ECSTATIC
that we are allegedly "price gouging" because it actually gives them the edge
over us...taking in all of the disgusted customers who think we are ripping them
off. But, to this day, go to any forum...go to The Shroomery or to Erowid,
and you will find a large number of people who will defend us, our products, and
who we are as a company. I say; let the customers offer the true measure of us,
our products, and our prices; there is room for all of us.
If competitors truly have a
superior product for a much cheaper price, then why not expand their reach, work
hard, as we did, to build a customer base, and let their superior products speak
for themselves, leaving us in their dust?
We also have had countless
instances of people not only stealing our images and our product ideas, but we
have had websites actually steal our entire concept for our site, without even
bothering to change the content, and then going on their internal forum, and
blaming us for stealing THEIR site. It amazes me. When we want to expand our
business, we never think to steal our competitors' ideas or to badmouth them. We
believe quite strongly in the services and products we provide, and we feel that
we are doing something quite valuable for the community.
We also believe that since we believe so passionately in what we do, that others
who are passionate about exploring and learning about all the things we offer on
the site, will find their way to us, and continue to find their way to us,
DESPITE any fleeting bad press, wild accusations, or a competitor trying to
badmouth us.
Furthermore, to be completely honest, there are COUNTLESS varieties and
qualities of products available, and they can even vary VASTLY even from crop to
crop. This is why we often offer multiple versions of the same product...to give
our customers something to compare other shops' products to. If some shop claims
that they have a "superior" or "equal" product as ours, we invite people to not
only look at the photos of the actual product for comparison, but to get a
sample of the product from both shops so that they can make their own judgment
and their own decisions. To this date, and with over 50,000 happy customers, we
have never had anyone come back to our shop and say that they felt that were
ripped off in any way.
One of my favorite examples is our Salvia divinorum. I make it the same way I
always have, in small, 100G batches by hand. I take the leaf, pick out the
stems, and even take the time to sift as much of the powdery material as I can.
It takes a great deal of time and patience to make it, but Salvia divinorum is
the reason I started this shop in the first place; it was deep connection to and
my passion for this plant that drove me to offer this sacred plant to other, and
to offer them something that wasn't mass manufactured, made with a measure of
care and, dare I say; love. No one else I knew of would take the time or effort
to do that, partially because it means less money in their pockets. This is also
why we could never wholesale Salvia...i could never make enough of it to
wholesale it. The Salvia I offer in the shop is the same Salvia that I work
with, and to me, there is a vast difference between creating an extract by hand
with the great care and respect I take, and an extract that is mass produced
like most of the Salvia available on the market.
Also, we have an FDA registered lab and clean room...something no other shop
that we know if has. But, it's not only for making many of our products, it has
been used to test some other shops' products. Salvia is another easy example: We
have ordered Salvia extracts from numerous shops. Not only is there a vast
difference in the physical quality (most other shops' extract that we purchased
looks like gunpowder, where ours looks like crushed leaf...how we feel it should
look), but there are hidden qualities that the consumer would never know...like
the solvent used to extract the product. All of our extractions are
ethanol and/or water-based, even though it is cheaper and faster to use acetone.
So, in my opinion, using Salvia divinorum as only a single example...not all
products are created equal. Again, we want anyone to come to us LAST; we want
people to know everything that is available to them, so that they can make their
own decisions about who they would like to buy from.
Ultimately, it is not us, the business owners who decide our fate; it is the
customers. If people didn't like what we were doing, they wouldn't buy our
products, and we would have to make drastic changes, or simply go out of
business. We are keenly aware of that fact each and every day, and treasure each
and every one of our customers for that exact reason. Most of our business has
actually been built by word of mouth, and that means the world to us, and we are
grateful to every one of them, more than we could ever explain.
Peacefulness,
Bodhi
www.iamshaman.com
P.S. For the few explanation about our price increase on some Kratom products,
please read the article found HERE.
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