The last couple of week’s have been busy local business woman Emma Heathcote-James. Not only did she launch a brand new range to mark the 10th anniversary of her business, Little Soap Company but she also scooped the award for Best Rural Retail Business at the Rural Business Awards at a ceremony up at Eastwood Park in Nottingham, then next day made the final four Business Women of the Year at the annual lavish luncheon at the Hilton Birmingham Metropole at the prestigious Women of the Year Awards.
With offices in Stratford and the workshop and main office team based on the Upper High Street in Broadway, Emma created the Little Soap Company after seeing a gap on the supermarket shelf. Quite simply, she wanted to get the world back to basics by creating pure organic soap – the key was making it affordable and accessible to everyone. There was space for an honest business to come and disrupt the beauty counter and from a hobby hand-making soap on the kitchen table and selling at farmers markets, the company fast upscaled to sell in Waitrose, Boots, Booths, Sainsbury, Ocado, Wholefoods, Tesco (UK and ROI) Fetch and Amazon to name but a few…
A couple of weeks ago marked the 10th anniversary since the first invoice and coincidently falling in the same week were the finals for both awards “we knew earlier in the year we had been shortlisted for them both – it made it a very exciting dress, food and champagne fueled 24 hours” laughed Emma.
Last Wednesday Emma launched her long awaited new Grapefruit and Orange range. “Our signature fragrances had became Rose Geranium and Lavender” says Emma, “these are our premium ranges in Waitrose, Booths, Ocado and Wholefoods but we felt we needed something more unisex and contemporary that was less floral, so I decided to mark the decade by creating just that!”. Emma spent two years developing a new organic shampoo, conditioner, hand and body lotion and shower gel (something they were asked to do by the top end supermarkets and which will be going onto Ocado later this month and Waitrose next year).
In terms of future plans and business vision, Little Soap Company has recently been certified by Leaping Bunny Cruelty Free which sits alongside their registration with Vegan Society. So what’s next? “We have secured new lines to sit alongside all our existing ones in all supermarkets next year. Organic and Natural bar soaps are making a massive resurgence in terms of being plastic free, biodegradable and ecofriendly and the supermarkets have recognized this. On top we are creating a new brand as well as new exclusive ranges – 2019 is going to be our biggest growth year yet, it’s massively exciting to be able to demonstrate you can do well living where we do and working rurally, both things I absolutely love”.
