Health Basics: a cheap, NZ-made alternative
Home » Blog » Sarah Marquet » Health Basics: a cheap, NZ-made alternativeFinally, success: cheap, New Zealand-made skincare—and clothing!
I can’t believe I didn’t think of them before: the Health Basics skincare range is made here. It's really cheap compared to other New Zealand-made skincare ranges and you can find them almost anywhere, even in The Warehouse.
It really is a bit slack that the products are usually on the bottom shelf though. Whatever reasons supermarkets have for which products go on which shelves, the ones on the bottom are not going to be bought if people can’t see them. I hardly ever look at the bottom shelves.
I’m not sure if supermarkets always carry the whole Health Basics range. I found a kiwifruit scrub in the clearance bin today, but I’d never seen it on the shelf before. It is an amazing scrub, with large exfoliating particles (so not for use every day). For an everyday scrub, I've been using Skinfood for a month now and it’s definitely as good, if not better, than the US-made one I was using before.
I also found some awesome crayons: Honeysticks. They’re nice and big (good for small hands), environmentally friendly, made from New Zealand beeswax and smell delicious! Who could want anything more in a crayon!?
Even better, I managed to find a New Zealand-made razor and clothes that fit my tight budget.
The razor, made by Goodfella, is $95—which unfortunately puts it quite outside my budget—but it's a one-time purchase. If waxing doesn’t work out I'll save up for it. The guys at www.rubbishfree.co.nz will be selling Goodfellas soon.
As for clothes, if you happen to be in Christchurch, go check out the Lane Walker Rudkin factory outlet store. It announced that it was going into receivership about a year ago, but the outlet store is still open everyday. It mostly sells socks, merino and sports gear (always good at this time of year), but it also has a few dresses, jackets and business suits, all really cheap. Apparently it’s all seconds, the stuff they can’t sell at retail, but everything I’ve ever bought from there has been fine. Sometimes there are items with small holes or wonky sewing but the fault is always marked so it’s pretty safe.
Mon May 03, 2010 @ 04:59 PM
