Girl gone mild

‘Wendyl Nissen’ used to be a name that inspired cold sweats in some of New Zealand’s biggest media and entertainment stars. As the former editor of New Zealand Women’s Weekly and Woman’s Day and producer of the talk show How’s Life, Nissen had a reputation as a take-no-prisoners go-getter who would do anything to land a story. Her memoir of her time in the media, Bitch & Famous, tells hilarious and slightly scary tales of fierce rows with publishers, veiled threats to celebrities and preposterous cover lines.

It’s all rather a long way from her persona today as the ‘green goddess’ who makes and sells her own eco-cleaning products, avoids processed food and shares knitting patterns for baby clothes and chicken jerseys (really!) on her website.

But it’s not a total about-face – even in her memoir, her interest in natural treatments shows through, like in an anecdote about giving Paul Holmes a herbal sleep remedy – and in person these days she’s still forthright, opinionated and prone to telling stories that might be described as the most entertaining version of the truth.

Two pots of ladybird-red geraniums mark the entrance to Wendyl’s Green Goddess store on Auckland’s Great North Road, Grey Lynn, standing out incongruously among panel beaters, battery specialists and budget printing services. Inside, the store is unpretentious and welcoming – shelves of brown-paper-bagged products sit next to an armchair and floor lamp straight out of your nana’s house. On the walls are watercolours of fresh foods, flowers and Wendyl holding a chicken, painted by her step-daughter, Alex. Nissen says customers often turn up thinking she’ll be behind the counter, but in reality, it’s usually staffed by her eldest son Daniel, who helps run the business and designs the packaging and logos.

Growing up a greenie

“I think it was always in me,” Nissen says when asked when her interest in natural products began. “Dan will remember growing up and having mad potions put on his feet. Once I put garlic on the kids’ feet when they had a cold and they both started screaming because it was burning them. When I was very young, I lived just around the corner in Bond Street and had my own garden and that sort of thing. I was quite hippie.”

In some ways, she says, it was a reaction against her mother, who was an early embracer of the kind of convenience foods that Nissen regularly investigates in her ‘Wendyl Wants To Know’ column for the Weekend Herald.

“When I had my own kids I wanted to be the complete opposite of that. Because I’m a journalist, I love to research and I just started finding all these old ways and adopting them. But it really didn’t kick in until I stopped working full-time and was freelancing at home. It does take time, experimenting with the different recipes, because they don’t work all the time.”

When she started urging her friends to jump on the DIY cleaning product bandwagon, they told her they’d rather she did it for them. So she did, mixing up big batches, launching a Trade Me store, and later selling from her own website. Now she sells a range of ready-made products in her store, from laundry powders to soaps and natural deodorants (their latest product, created by Daniel), as well as baskets of bulk ingredients for people who want to have a crack at making the products themselves. And it’s easy enough to do that – Nissen puts the recipes right there on every packet.

“People thought we were mad for doing that,” she admits. “But it’s really important to me that the brand is trusted; that’s why I put the recipe on. The thing is, none of these recipes are mine. I got them out of old books. They’ve been around for centuries. I didn’t invent them, so why should I put a copyright on them? I want to share them.”

It’s not just about establishing credibility, she says – she really does want people to change their lifestyles, not just for themselves, but for the environment as a whole.

“I started with it being about getting the message out there,” she says. “I see myself as a communicator, and the newspaper column [analysing products] was about that. Get it out there, get more people into it.”

Daniel agrees: “Transparency gains a lot of trust, which is good for the brand, but I think it’s mostly about getting the message out there. Having the recipes on them is also good for helping people realise how little you need to achieve them.”

The joy of small business

She sources the ingredients locally and overseas – white vinegar from Temuka, essential oils from the Hawke’s Bay-based Lotus Oils (and some from India and Australia), and Dr Bronner’s castile soap from America.

“People say to us, ‘Oh, you have to get into supermarkets, that’s where you get volume and that’s where you’ll make lots of money.’ But we don’t really want to! We would never go into supermarkets because of the price point supermarkets demand. For us to do that, we couldn’t use natural ingredients. We’d have to not use essential oils and not use the Castile soap. I don’t know how [other supermarket eco-brands] do it.”

At present, they sell a lot online, particularly through promotions in Nissen’s regular newsletter, which has more than 10,000 subscribers.

“If I say, ‘Hey, I’ve got this on special this week,’ whoosh, it’s gone.” Sometimes Daniel has to talk her down from her more hare-brained ideas: “It’s my 51st birthday this week, so I said to Daniel, ‘Let’s have a 51 per cent off sale!’ And he had to say, ‘Mum, that’s not going to work.’” Not surprisingly, she says they want to find a business mentor to help guide them in the right direction.

For now, they come up with new products in response to customer suggestions.

“They’ve been hassling us for a dishwashing liquid for ages, and I just can’t make it work without putting chemicals in it, because they want it to be bubbly. And bubbles mean chemicals,” Nissen says. She’s also formulating a toilet cleaner, and Daniel is developing a body and hand wash.

Keeping it real

Although the family avoid commercial cleaning products and processed food (with the exception of moments of rebellion from Nissen’s 15-year-old, Pearl), Nissen says they’re not diehard purists.

“I mean, I dye my hair. I’m not going to stop doing that. We’re not black and white. And that’s an important message to me too. There’s that old environmentalist thing where you’re vegan and you’re not going to wash and you’re going to lecture to everyone…”

“I’ve been lectured to by some purists in here,” Daniel breaks in.

“Yeah, like, ‘You shouldn’t be stocking that, blah blah blah’,” Nissen agrees. “But we are quite relaxed as a family. No religion involved.”

The plan for the time-being is to keep going, business as usual, she says.

“I don’t want to be in the business pages in two years’ time. I think being active and involved with something is one of the greatest gifts you can have in life and Daniel and I have that with this company, so we’ll just keep going. If I turn up here in 10 years’ time and Dan has his kids out the back, that’ll be perfect.”

“We might get arrested for making 10-year-olds work,” Daniel says dryly.

And she’s adamant she never misses the glamour and pressure of the corporate media world.

“Oh shit no. I wasn’t very nice back then, was I Dan?” she asks.

“To us you were,” he says mildly, but it’s evident he knew his mother wasn’t so pleasant at work.

“To my family I was fine, but I didn’t really like the person I was,” Nissen says. “It’s a very tough industry. Leaving was the best thing I ever did. I feel physically ill being in a magazine office now. That’s how bad it got.”

For now, she’s happy to keep growing the business – if you’ll excuse the pun – organically. “It pays its bills, and it’s getting the message out there, and people enjoy the products and we love that. It’s a very positive energy thing. Good karmic values. It beats running celebrity stories.”

Wendyl’s incredibly easy Green Goddess glass cleaner

You’ll need

• white vinegar
• water
• liquid detergent
• lavender essential oil (optional, but will make it smell nice)

Method

Step 1 Fill a 1L spray bottle with one part white vinegar and two parts water.

Step 2 Add a few drops of liquid detergent, and a few drops of lavender oil (if using).

Step 3 Spray on to glass and make sure you use scrunched-up newspaper to wipe off.

Handy link

wendyls.co.nz