Selene Homeopathics

Flower essences are a beautiful anchor for support in times of stress, fear, uncertainty or other high emotions. The system was devised by Dr Edward Bach in the late 1920's and today flower essences have become a trusted, safe emotional support tool. We now sell Flower essences at Selene and until the 30th September you can use the coupon code SPRING20 in store for 20% off any purchase including these beautiful essences. https://selene.co.nz/collections/flower-essence-remedies

On 1 May this year I became the owner of New Zealand’s oldest homeopathic dispensary, Selene Homeopathics.
This was not part of my plan!
When I first looked into studying homeopathy about 15 years ago, it all seemed a bit old fashioned. I also had work, family and a business and decided it wasn’t for me.
Fast forward a decade or so and, thanks to Covid and some other unexpected turns, I graduated as a homeopath in 2023.
Before that I’d spent most of my adult life self-employed, including 10 years running my web design business, Clarity Web. I sold that business in 2017 and assumed that chapter was finished. Apparently not.
While building my homeopathic practice, I started working one day a week at Selene Homeopathics in Tauranga. Selene was founded in 1990 and had been run for many years by one of its original founders, Pam McEwan, who is now 92.
I loved my days there. I was surrounded by remedies, the phone rang with people asking questions, and I felt like I was being a homeopath all day, rather than one contending with imposter syndrome while working hard to build a practice.
Eventually Pam asked if I wanted to buy the business.
After quite a lot of “Do I really want another business?” and a fairly robust negotiation with God/the universe, I said yes.
And then all these seemingly unrelated bits of my working life made sense. If there was ever a job for a web designer who became a homeopath, owning an online homeopathic dispensary is probably it.
The past few months have involved stocktaking 1000's of remedies to digitise a 36-year-old inventory, building a practitioner portal, redesigning our home prescribing kits and working out what Selene should look like for its next chapter.
While I have been tending to the modernisation of a 36-year-old business, it has raised a bigger question for me: how do you modernise something without losing what made it valuable in the first place?
And this has led me to my thoughts on homeopathy - homeopathy has an accessibility problem.
It is a huge subject. We have more than 200 years of literature, 7000+ remedies, different methodologies and plenty of robust discussion within the profession.
But none of that is useful to a parent with a sick child at 2am who simply wants help. If she had 5 useful homeopathic remedies and 5 notes about when she might consider each of them, she would at least have a place to start.
I think homeopathy needs a better user interface.
Not dumbing down or throwing away its history, just a better doorway into it.
This is how I see my role with Selene and the future of homeopathy; preserve what matters, modernise what needs modernising, make information easier to access, and give more people an opportunity to discover homeopathy without feeling they need to understand the entire subject first.
Sometimes an old idea doesn't need reinventing. It just needs a new doorway.

Our new branding for Selene Homeopathics (second pic if it’s not obvious…😊) is a nos to the history and legacy of this 32 year old business while looking very much forward to the future of homeopathy and where we will be taking the business.

I’m so thrilled with the service from the talented team tweaking this logo to make it perfect! So clever!

Counting down to takeover day on Friday 1st May ❤️

The new Selene Homeopathics logo is a nod to the history and legacy of this 32 year old business while looking toward a bright future for homeopathy.

Very happy with where this landed after wonderful efforts of the clever team. Absolutely thrilled. ❤️

Counting down to takeover day on Friday!!