Recently
the Canadian Health Food Association (CHFA) held one of their two
annual trade shows in Vancouver. Every year retailers of all types
descend upon the show looking for new products to introduce to their
customers. Green Earth Organics is no exception and we thought you might
like to hear a little bit about how we go about finding new items to
bring in.
Throughout the year we rely mostly on suggestions from
you, as well as reaching out to companies whose products fill gaps in
our offerings. Recently we filled one of those gaps in Vancouver by
bringing in Gentle Earth, a Victoria based company, who has helped
expand our selection with items like Sun Protection and a Recovery cream
for tired and aching muscles. Just in time for summer!
CHFA
West is the largest trade show in Western Canada for natural and organic
products. It takes up the entire main floor of the Vancouver Convention
Centre with a whopping 65,000 square feet of manufacturers,
distributors, and brokers. As a lark, I turned on my running app and set
it to record my walk throughout the show. We spent 4 ½ hours and walked
over 23 kilometers. Note to self: next time wear my good running shoes.
A full two aisles of the show were set aside as completely organic
products and other companies with both organic and non-organic products
were scattered among the exhibitors every where else.
Our first
stop was Westpoint Naturals where we were thrilled to discover a new
organic corn starch in their trademark resealable bags. Later in the day
we also found kelp noodles, which are an awesome gluten-free noodle
that look similar to vermicelli. They don’t require any cooking, so they
work great in salad, stir-fry, soup, and veggie dishes. Seaweed/kelp
products are definitely one of the biggest trends in organic right now.
Gimme
Organic, they make roasted seaweed snacks in both regular sea salt and
sesame flavours, had a new item. Resealable mini packs of seaweed
crumbles in a honey Dijon flavour that are meant to go on salads or be
eaten as a snack. They brought a ton to pass out and let people try, so
since it was getting close to the end of the day, they happily handed
over an entire box to me when I asked to try some. One less thing for
them to take home, but I looked pretty silly lugging a box under my arm
for the rest of the show.
As a request from one of our Vancouver
customers we also were also on the lookout for some black rice and
discovered Lotus Foods, who have a whole line of different rice grains
and rice noodles. I’d love to try and see if the Lotus Forbidden black
rice works for making sushi. It always looks so neat when I see the
black rice sushi in restaurants. Also, good news for fans of alternative
milk and So Nice (known for their soy milk), they have just introduced a
brand new organic Almond Milk. We tried it at the show and absolutely
loved it. It won’t even be hitting the market until next month, so let
us know if you’re interested!
There were so many new products I'd
never have enough room to list them all, but keep checking our products
as over the next couple months we have some exciting items coming.
