Jamie on why the business was founded...
"It came out of expertise we had in the parent business. We saw an opportunity to put some of that expertise into a retail product rather than just selling it to the industry.
"The Stephenson Group [which Jamie was the fifth generation of his family to run] is a speciality chemical business in the north of England that provides soap to the textile industry. And the evolution of that, as the textile industry moved out of the UK, was that we developed products to achieve the same objectives as what we made for the textile industry – washing grease and dirt off wool fibres."
On whether the parent company interferes, and the merits of having a large, resource-laden backer...
"It is very much is an autonomous business. I’m responsible for it and I have to decide how much money goes into it.
"One of the benefits of having the bigger business is you have a very experienced team of bright people who you couldn’t afford to bring into a small startup business."
On seeing a gap in the market...
"If you look at organic personal care products, there’s a lot that are very expensive, but there’s no need for them to be expensive. A lot of products claim to be natural but they’re no more natural than many regular products.
"So we thought if Bentley Organic is going to have an impact in the marketplace, from a commercial and environmental perspective, you have to sell a reasonable volume of it. We saw an opportunity – because we’re manufacturers of the core materials, we could produce a product that was not only certified as organic, but actually affordable."
