History of Company
In 1974 Penny's mother Shirley became interested in aromatherapy in order to treat her mother who had arthritis. After many training courses, including some abroad, Shirley set up as an aromatherapist, blending and creating her own creams for customers in her busy hairdressing and beauty salon. She went on to found Shirley Price Aromatherapy.
Penny and her brother Matthew were soon involved and were helping with mixing creams and filling pots. Penny's interest grew and she decided at the age of 22 to be an aromatherapist. In 1986, Shirley's company had grown enormously into a training school and product manufacturing plant and Penny trained as a teacher to take on the role as College Tutor.
After many successful years in business, Shirley and her husband Len sold the company to enable them to retire. Penny found it extremely difficult to work with people who were not family and soon left the company, which shortly afterwards, went into administration. After completing a Masters Degree in education at Oxford University Penny began to think of founding her own company.
The Company
In June 2003, Penny Price Aromatherapy was formed with a little financial
help of friends. Penny wrote the entire course training notes from scratch
for aromatherapy and anatomy and physiology, to match the syllabus for the
accrediting bodies she was to join. She formed a price list; some marketing
material for proposed products and began to write postgraduate 1-day courses
for the trained therapist. In August of 2003, Penny with her family travelled
to the south of France where traditionally, her parents had always bought
their essential oils and other products straight from the farmers. Having
chosen the products needed, they were brought home in the car. The bottles
were ordered along with labels and eventually PPA began proper trading in
September 2003. Penny's brother Matthew created all the corporate ID and marketing
materials and created this website, and is a great help to the company.
Within 2 months of trading Penny had two international contacts through the website, both people she had trained in a 'previous life' that wanted to take PPA products and school satellite programme, who received intensive teacher and product training. Japan was the first overseas country to offer PPA products and courses - PPA now have three schools there. Taiwan opened shortly afterwards and now has two venues. A product distributor in Singapore was also among the first to be part of the PPA network. In April 2004, Sandra Day School of Health was bought by the company and in May of 2004, distributors from Cypress and Ireland were trained. Since then PPA also has schools and distributors in Korea, Australia, Norway, Sri Lanka, United States, Brazil, Greece and hopefully more to come!
Penny spent a long time developing her products, hand-blending every recipe until the aroma and the consistency of each was right. Over 400 different products, falling into about 11 ranges - some for babies, some for men, some skincare, some therapeutic were developed. Penny's daughter Ellie and husband Bob have now joined the business, who along with the other staff, work hard to develop the company and introduce people to the wonderful world of therapy.
NB Shirley Price would like to point out that she is no longer connected
in any way whatsoever with 'Shirley Price Aromatherapy'. She now fully supports
Penny and acts as consultant to the Penny Price Academy along with her husband
Len.
Penny Price Aromatherapy, The Stables, 41 Leicester Road, Hinckley LE10 1LW England. Registered Office: 10 Station Road, Earl Shilton LE9 7GA Registered in England 04772603
