Store featuring all things lavender coming to Geneva

GENEVA – Lavender, known for its fragrant purple blooms, will be coming to 310 Campbell St., Geneva, in a new franchise business called Pelindaba Lavender.

It will carry some 240 lavender-based products, all organically-grown on a farm on San Juan Island off the coast of Washington, said franchisee Drew Grennell, 27, son of Mark Grennell, 57, both the franchisees for Pelindaba Lavender in Geneva.

“We found out about it through Mark, while he was on vacation in Seattle,” Drew Grennell said. “He took a ferry ride to San Juan Island. He and my mom walked into a store in Friday Harbor, saw the products, and they were blown away. They talked to the store manager and could not stop thinking about it.”

Then they walked into another store on Bainbridge Island and were blown away again, Drew Grennell said.

After a year of research, the father and son franchisees will be opening the company’s 11th Pelindaba Lavender store in Geneva around June 15, Drew Grennell said.

All the products will come from the company’s farm on San Juan Island, said spokeswoman Amelia Baggett for Pelindaba Lavender.

The lavender is grown, harvested, its essential oils extracted from flowers processed in an onsite distillery at the farm to be made into its various products – all by hand and in small batches – then delivered to its stores, Baggett said.

“Everything comes back to the farm. We have the widest range of lavender-based products that we know of anywhere,” Baggett said.

Lavender has the most known uses and longest recorded history of those uses than other other plant in the western world, Baggett said.

The company's offerings include products for personal care, therapy, household and pet care as well as culinary, floral and for home decor, Baggett said.

“What we are doing is simply bringing the many uses and benefits to everyday applications for everybody,” Baggett said. “It’s an incredibly versatile plant.”

The Pelindaba Lavender farm grows two varieties of lavender for all its products, but hosts a demonstration garden with 50 varieties for visitors, Baggett said.

The farm began as an open-space project in 1998 and evolved into the company opening its first store on-site of the farm in 2001. Pelindaba is a Zulu word that translates to “place of great gatherings," according to its website.

Part of being a franchisee is to locate a store in a small town known for drawing tourists, Baggett said.

Geneva fit the bill just fine, Drew Grennell said.

“It fit their criteria and it was not too far away from us,” Drew Grennell said, as his father lives in Tinley Park and he lives in Lamont.

“It’s a nice, quaint town that we felt had nice boutiques that would take us in with open arms,” Drew Grennell said. “We just wanted to add to the overall niceness of the town.”

More information is available by calling 331-248-8954, email geneva@pelindaba.com or by visiting www.pelindabalavender.com/geneva.