Information about Essential Trading

You can find out about Essential Trading: what we do, the way we work, our approach to selling, and how this is reflected in the products we source and sell.
 
þ 100 % Vegetarian
þVegan wherever possible
þ Organic wherever possible
þ Large Fair Traded range
þ Quality Produce & Information
þ Eco-Friendly Cleaning
þ Independent Worker Owned Business
þ Knowledgeable staff, because we use the products that we sell.
þ Friendly, co-operative service.
 


Why Essential is a worker's co-op

Essential Trading is commonly owned and controlled by the employees of the company.

This means we are a non-hierachical organisation, where the employees participate in the creation and running of our working practices and our working environment.

It is co-operative business structure that truly allows our trading ethics to govern our business decisions.

It also allows us to run our business based on the values of honesty, openness, social responsibility and caring.(See Co-ops)
Essential Co-op facts:
  • All permanent employees who work at least 24 hours a week are eligible for membership of our co-op.

  • This is the democratic basis of our business. We currently have 80 members, and each individual is a co-director with an equal say in how our business is run and developed.

  • Of course, this means that we have no shareholders, so our profits can be used for the good of the business.
 
It is the fact that we are a workers co-operative that allows us to operate based on the ethics we believe in, and it is those ethics that make us function as a worker's co-operative. This is why we are a successful business, with a reputation for friendly, honest, reliable and informed service. (See Services)


Our trading ethics
As you may already have gathered, our trading objectives are defined by our core ethical beliefs:
  • our opposition to the exploitation of animals
  • our promotion of the issue of healthy eating
  • our concern for protecting the environment
  • our commitment to human rights as a trading issue
  • and our dedication to the commitment to the development of co-operative principles in society

In order to see our beliefs become actions, we will actively promote trade in products that fulfil our ethical criteria, and avoid trading in products that contradict our moral beliefs.

To this end we are proud to actively support the distribution of Organic, GMO free, Fair Trade, and all vegetarian and vegan natural foods.

Ethics as a trading issue has always been something that we work for, and we are glad to be a part of the increasing tendency of people to exercise their buying power by making certain choices in the market, based on their willingness to consider the history of the product they want to buy, and what it means commercially if they do or don't go ahead with that purchase.

 


A Very Brief History of Essential
 

Essential is the result of a merger in 1991 of two long standing worker co-operatives:

Harvest Natural Foods of Bath
and
Nova wholefoods of Bristol
Since the merger, the new company has grown year-on-year so that we now:
  • have a customer base of 1,500 active accounts
  • sell over 6,000 product lines
  • employ a total of about 100 staff
  • 80 of whom are full members of the co-operative
  • have achieved a turnover in excess of £12 million last financial year
The conception of our co-operative's business came from a belief in the inherent "goodness" of the products that we sold, and it was the strength of this belief that has carried the business forward.

During the time that we have been around, we have witnessed a sea change in attitude towards natural vegetarian food: from the comedic notion that it's for rabbits, and that vegetarians eat rabbit food, right up to the present day opinion that we should all eat more of it, and that the much processed food (the stuff we don't sell) isn't any good and never was.

You only have to look at the current trends in the media and what's taking up more and more shelf-space in the frighteningly successful supermarket chains, to see that food without additives, that isn't over processed, and which is diverse in its sources is rampant.
 


Mission Statement
Our mission statement defines both our business itself ,and the motivation behind it.
We hope to help to maintain an independent trade sector, free from the murkier concerns of national and international big business, nurturing a market for and continuing to supply the kind of products that we sell.

We hope to create a world where we can live comfortably together without the exploitation of the Earth and everything that lives in it.

We believe that central to our success are all the people who work together with us. To achieve this end, we consider these aims:
 
1) Promote awareness of the effect of our lifestyle both on ourselves and on our environment.
2) Exist as a financially successful, non-hierachical, democratic organisation where workers participate in the creation and running of their working environment, as an example for others to do likewise. 3) Provide an environment which encourages and helps people to develop and achieve their potential. 4) Actively support co-operatives, fair trade, environmental issues and community activities.		 Our Trading Policy is as follows:
1) Supply and promote wholefoods and eco-friendly products. 2) Where possible to provide organic and vegan alternatives 3) To be aware of human rights as a trading issue and to provide ethically sourced alternatives 4) To trade profitably and develop a sound financial base to secure our own future and to support others with similar objectives.
 
If you have any further queries or questions, please do not hesitate to contact us.