Seed to Seal?

Seed to Seal

We’ve all heard the “Seed to Seal” argument, and it’s used all the time to suggest that Young Living is a superior company.

You may have seen a recent Facebook post from Sarah Goff, a Young Living sales rep, who claimed to call various essential oil companies to demand why she couldn’t tour their farms. If you didn’t see it, you can read the original post on Facebook here. The post has since gone viral, with over 11,000 shares to date.

Sarah drew the conclusion that Young Living is the only trustworthy essential oil company, based on their so-called “Seed to Seal” promise. “Seed to Seal” is a marketing tool used by Young Living to imply their brand is superior, which has been twisted into a myth that the company owns ALL their own farms.

On the Young Living website, it actually explains that their oils are also sourced from “partner farms” and “certified suppliers”. However, this doesn’t seem to stop sales reps from believing that Young Living actually grows all its own plants. What’s even more bizarre is that some reps even think Young Living grows them all in the USA, and that you can go and tour ANY of their farms. While they do have a lavender farm in Utah that’s open to the public, I highly doubt they offer “farm tours” for oils like Frankincense, which are certainly not cultivated in the USA!

Few others have written about this exaggerated “Seed to Seal” myth – however, I did find this quote from Robert Tisserand about Young Living, where he wrote “yes, they absolutely buy from other distillers. If you are using/selling a wide range of essential oils that come from radically different climates, there is no other option.”

Lavender Farm Essential Oils

We could debate whether Young Living owns all its own farms or not. What’s important is that you cannot dismiss other essential oil brands purely on the basis that you can’t call up and arrange a farm tour.

The Aromapologist (Lauren Bridges) wrote an excellent and thorough explanation of why Sarah Goff’s conclusions are completely flawed. It’s worth a read, and I highly recommend that you read it in full here.

All I would add, in response to Sarah’s final question (“How can you sell something to someone knowing they are going to put it on themselves/their kids and not know anything about it?”) is that this sums up the entire business model of Young Living. Anyone can sign up overnight and sell YL essential oils without any training. Their sales reps are dishing out unqualified medical advice all over social media, without any proper education or foundation knowledge of aromatherapy.

Therefore, I wonder why Sarah thinks it’s ok for YL sales reps to sell essential oils to the general public “knowing they are going to put it on themselves/their kids” without any proper training or qualifications?