A Day at the Vitality Show 2009

April 13, 2009

On Saturday (28th March) Amanda and I went to the Vitality Show at Earls Court 2.

With hundreds of bargain hungry women all in one place, we knew it would be a busy day so arrived at 10am to avoid the crowds. However, everyone else also had the same idea. Unfortunately photography wasn’t permitted so I couldn’t take any photos.

The Organic Pavillion

The Organic Pavillion (sponsored by LoveLula) was an area of the show dedicated to natural and organic body care. It was smaller than I expected but contained some great brands including Yes!, Green People, Spiezia Organics, Skin Deli, Skin Blossom and Organic Bloom.

I was very pleased to see Spiezia Organics had a stand at the show as I really wanted to try some of their products before buying (in particular their brown sugar marigold scrub) them because they are quite expensive. I asked the stand attendee what the scrub contained and she reeled off a list of all natural ingredients and said it was so natural you could eat it….and then she did! She said many of their products are made from oils which is very beneficial for the skin as they were similar to sebum – meaning the skin has to produce less. I bought a cleanser (worth £22) and a rose and vanilla face oil (worth £27.90) for £20!

I fell in love with a brand called The Skin Deli whilst at the show – there stand looked great and their products looked and felt amazing. I’d never heard of them before and much of their website is still under construction, so I am thinking they could be a relatively new brand. All of their products are 100% natural and made from super skin foods like avocado oil, almond oil, shea butter and essential oils. The Skin Deli offered a 25% discount on all of their products at the Vitality Show.

Outside the pavillion

Outside of the pavillion area, there were brands like Brown Earth -their stand felt quite empty which I think is because they have quite a select product range compared to some of the companies at the show. We found a stand called ‘Yes!’ and after trying to figure out what they sold by squinting at their posters, we realised it was natural sexual lube!

One stand in particular that stood out for me was Tropic Skincare. Their products are all made in Australia from only essential oils and base oils like jojoba, macadamia, olive and avacado. We received a free hand treatment with their sea salt body polish and some nourishing cream and were very impressed. I had a look on their website and they only make 4 products: body scrub, face scrub, moisturiser and a cleansing cream. Like Skin Deli they weren’t a brand I’d heard of before, so it was a good discovery.

I was really looking forward to seeing the healing herb garden I’ve mentioned in a previous post. We spent a while looking for it and it it turned out we’d walked past it a couple of times because it was much smaller than the preview on the Vitality Show website. It was mostly a few baskets of herbs with a name tag sticking out.

Stepping onto the Neals Yard stand felt like walking into one of their shops. The stand had a back wall, shelving, some comfy seats and a coffee table which made it feel a bit more like a consulting area. I’m familiar with their products so I didn’t spend long at their stand, but they deserved 10/10 for presentation.

Goodie bags

The tickets were £14.50 – whilst it wasn’t alot, we were hoping to get a few freebies from around the show, but there weren’t any. Some of the brands really discounted their products (Spiezia Organics, Skin Deli) but the majority had only taken a couple of pounds off the normal price. At the end of the show we went and got a goodie bag which mostly contained chocolate and some home improvement catalogues – quite surprising for a show about health and wellbeing. I felt very guilty chucking away all the spam that came in the bag and was even more horrified to see so many people doing the same thing outside!

Overall

I was pleased to see such a large number of natural and organic companies at the show and hope this is a reflection of a good demand for products of this type. I really enjoyed talking to the stand attendees in detail about their products – this was actually much easier to do in the Organic Pavillion than in any other part of the show because of the crowds!

One thing I will say about booking tickets is to have a look at the websites of companies who will be exhibiting at the show as you might get money off tickets and possibly a voucher for a free product – like Benefit did this year.

Overall we had a great day and I recommend going along if you fancy a day of girlie time. It gets very busy, but if you just let the crowds carry you round you’ll have a great time.