Our Mission
We are here to offer a positive alternative.
Our History
The Happy Herb Company was born when Ray Thorpe, our founder and director, realised that natural herbs can have significant positive effects on both health and mood. Through research and experimentation, Ray discovered that herbs can offer a safer, healthier, non-addictive alternative to many known medicinal and recreational drugs on the market.
Despite wanting to share the joys of herbs with the public, he soon realised that knowledge and information about herbs is not only rare, but actively suppressed by the powerful pharmaceutical lobby. In a quest to promote the appreciation and education of natural plants and herbs, Ray started a small market stall at the monthly market in Uki, a small village in northern New South Wales, Australia.
From these humble beginnings we've grown to a large family of roughly 40 Happy Herb Shops around Australia, and we continue to strive towards our goal of knowledge of and freedom to access all natural plants and herbs.
What Our Shops Provide
Our shops are very different from other herbal or health food shops. At the Happy Herb Company we promote herbs and exclusive herbal products that bring happiness, wellness, energy, relaxation, or arousal. As well as supplying a myriad of amazing herbs that are often hard to find, we do it in a friendly, fun, happy, colourful way!
Our shops carry a range of NATURAL energy boosters, relaxing blends, addiction interrupters, mood enhancers, powerful aphrodisiacs and health tonics that cannot be found anywhere else. To identify products or remedies that empower our customers to take charge of their own health and wellbeing, we draw upon traditional wisdom traditions that are thousands of years old in addition to the latest in modern nature-based remedies, keeping an eye on the latest research.
Our team of herbies is an eclectic mix of herbalists, natural therapists, festival goers, business people and plant nerds who are connected by their love of plants, people and planet. In our shops you'll find unique products that are not easy to find in other similar stores - we stock safe natural party alternatives, superfoods, books, fire toys, natural health products, natural cosmetics, natural fitness/weight loss products, natural products to enhance cognition and memory, hangover cures, natural skincare products, funky clothes, and more.
The herbs we promote are happy healing herbs. None of our party alternatives are harmful or addictive (ie: habit-forming), and have no awful side effects, come-downs or hangovers (unlike some popular legal and illegal drugs such as cigarettes, alcohol, Prozac, amphetamines etc). We serve to re-educate the public about the important role that herbs play in human health and well-being.
Activism
Ray Thorpe's vision is a properly informed public using safe non-addictive plants for medicine and recreation. Compare this to the current reality, where alcohol, tobacco and dangerous chemicals are consumed on a massive scale every weekend, while violent gangs continue to make huge profits from illicit markets.
Major drug policy experts and institutions around the world now concur that prohibition is an untenable and harmful policy. However, for various political and economic reasons, vested interests continue their efforts to control and restrict people's innate tendency to seek alteration of mood, and indeed to suppress the use of plants in a multitude of ways. With this in mind, throughout the years has been a central aspect of our mission, accomplished through the supply of safe legal alternatives to drugs of harm and addiction.
We support the work of organisations such as the Plant Freedom Alliance, who work to change regressive drug laws like these in favour of evidence-based harm minimisation strategies.
Our Ethos - 'Not Just For Profit'
We are a social enterprise - a new kind of business that is not only about profit and the bottom dollar. It is a kind of business that understands that we are custodians of our planet, our children, our communities, and seeks to give back to the world as much as it gets.
The Happy Herb Company is completely dedicated to being a shining example of a social enterprise. More than 10% of our profit is set aside for community projects and good causes! We also encourage our store owners to operate as a social enterprise, and are very touched by the many that do.
We aim to support and partner with organisations across a wide berth of causes, which we have categorised into Humanitarian, Ecological Causes, Plant Freedom, Animal Welfare, and support for artists and creative projects. Please take time to view this section of our website which we would love to inspire others, especially profitable businesses that can also support the welfare of our planet and global community.
