North Fork Natural of Cutchogue is closing its doors but owner Fernanda Menegassi-Loja says it’s not the end of the road for her business.
“I’ve decide to transition to online sales and to selling my products in a few local shops,” she says. “I’ve been growing my online business and have loyal customers who have been purchasing from my website since the beginning.”
Menegassi-Lojac opened the Main Road shop two years ago, selling skincare and aromatherapy products, and says that she’s done pretty well despite the lack of foot traffic through the downtown area. Her vibrant online presence has made her decision to close the brick and mortar shop and focus on her website sales easier.
Originally trained as a nurse, Menegassi-Lojac started making soaps and aromatherapy products at home, giving them to friends and family as gifts. Soon everyone was requesting more of her products and she realized that she had something good going. She became a certified aromatherapist, learned how to make soaps and deodorants out of organic materials and her business took off.
She sold her products at fairs and says everything happened really fast. In 2015 she became the proprietor of North Fork Naturals, not only making all of the products herself but selling them as well.
She eventually trained someone to make and sell the products with her, but after the employee left the area, she found herself staying late at night to get everything done, giving up personal time and devoting all her energies to the shop.
“It was hard,” she says. “There are times that you need balance in your life. Now I will have more personal time to work on other projects, take classes, do other things.”
Menegassi-Lojac has arranged to sell some of her products at Cutchogue’s Revel North Fork and Vestige Vintage in Mattituck. She is in negotiations with several other local shops to sell her products and will continue her online sales at northforknatural.com.
She is also working on a new project, something similar but closer to her heart, she says. But she is not ready to reveal what that is just yet.
“It will probably happen by the end of the year,” she says.
She will miss the one-on-one with the customers she meets at her shop, she admits. “People come in to browse, smell the oils and stay around to chat. I’ll miss that.”
North Fork Natural is located at 28080 Main Road in Cutchogue and will remain open until mid-June.
