smallbusiness.co.uk: Helping your business think big

Wiggly Wigglers was the first company in the UK to launch a compost worm kit. Nearly 20 years later Heather Gorringe has won £15,000 as the UK winner of the Dell Small Business Excellence Award

How did the company begin?

I was reducing the waste in our small farm holding through worm composting. When I realised how effective it was I decided to start selling our own kits. I raised £15,000 by re-mortgaging the house and built our initial customer base by advertising our mail order catalogues in specialist magazines like Gardeners World.

Has your marketing changed?

When the internet took off in 1995/6 we set up a website as a way of advertising ourselves. Now we promote the company through things such as Facebook, social network blogs and doing regular pod casts from our farm.

How has the company developed?

We decided to start branching out to other products in 2000 to further engage people who had already started to recognise their waste problems. Now we have 900 sustainable living products and a turnover over £2.6 million.

How will the prize help you?

With the £15,000 we want to invest in more technology for marketing. We’ll set up a big screen and audio equipment for our pod casts and give everyone in the office laptops.
Also, by meeting someone as successful and innovative as Michael Dell, something is bound to rub off and stay with me.

What next?

We really want to expand our customer base and consequently connect more people to their gardens. They make up 12.5 per cent of land in the UK so if gardens were used to produce more food it would have a huge impact on a lot of our habits.

Worms are at the core of this because without them we wouldn’t have quality soil.

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