Dudley firm hopes national award will be springboard for expansion

Eco-friendly cleaning brand Iron and Velvet beat off competition from multi-national companies to scoop the Cleaning Product of the Year award at the Clean & Tidy Home Show held at the London Excel last month, and now hopes to use their success as a springboard for expansion.

The brainchild of co-founder and chemist Alex Dunham, who developed the brand's first product offer in a Portakabin laboratory around seven years ago, the firm now employs six staff at its Deepdale Lane works in Dudley where it develops, manufactures and packages its range of plastic-free environmentally friendly cleaning product refills. 

"This was our second time at the clean and tidy home show, going up against loads of big brands for cleaning product of the year, which was absolutely amazing, and we're so grateful and happy to have won it," said Brand Creative Director Phebe Ashton.

"We've already had a private label opportunity for someone who met us there and we have a huge retail opportunity on the back of this that's probably going to see us going into [another] 50 stores in February that we're now already at the commercial stages off, so it's a huge opportunity for us."

Having been supplying to around 450 independent refill and eco-stores, the company is now eyeing up a major expansion into the UK's High Street grocery retailers, alongside plans to expand its distribution into Europe and beyond. The firms is also working on a number of partnership opportunities with manufacturers.

"For the last 5 years the brand has built a really strong direct consumer website," said Chief Executive Officer Debra Glover. 

"Now the next step for the brand is to move into main-stream retail, so we're targeting the top 10 grocery retailers in the UK and we're already in conversations with some of those, and hopefully to also expand into the EU where we have several opportunities from Germany and from the Netherlands that we really want to leverage.

"We've been working with department of business and trade to make sure we're ready as a business, we've been working a lot with Oxford Initiative via Dudley business first and west midlands business authority who've really supported us in understanding how we take the business forward.

"The future's looking bright for the brand we're just making sure that we're ready. This award is really something we can use to propel our image and brand voice."