Little Soap Company has been honoured with a Queen’s Award for Enterprise for its excellence in INNOVATION for its Eco Warrior brand.
The Queen’s Awards for Enterprise are the most prestigious business awards in the country and were first established in 1965. This year Little Soap Company joins 51 other UK businesses and organisations this year who have been recognised for their contribution to innovation.
The sustainable BCorp, Little Soap Company was founded in 2008 by Emma Heathcote-James, who began her mission to make pure, natural, sustainable, soap accessible to all at an affordable price when she questioned why supermarkets didn’t offer any choice of natural or organic soaps.
Starting on the kitchen table, Little Soap Company brought the first organic bar soap to supermarket shelves with Emma’s handmade bars being trialled in 8 Waitrose in 2010. A roaring success, she upscaled production to a national level and a year later launched in Waitrose nationally followed by all the other main retailers and hasn’t stopped – constantly pushing boundaries and exploring new possibilities.
With the HQ based in Broadway, the picturesque village in the North Cotswolds, Little Soap Company has been disrupting the soap market for fourteen years. The team is hybrid and spread around the UK, coming together quarterly for Away Days together to plan the next quarter.
Unbeknownst there was a pandemic looming, their Eco Warrior brand launched mid 2019 totally disrupting the status quo, proving a bar of soap is no longer just that. These functional bars are specially formulated shampoo, shaving foam, facial wash, shower gel or body scrub each replacing an unnecessary bottle, tub, pot or tube.
Eco Warrior, touted to be better than their traditional counterparts, now offer a sensitive and men’s range. The brand has certainly touched a nerve and has already won many industry awards including Natural Health, Green Parent, Pure Beauty and Beauty Shortlist Awards, resonates with the customer. Starting life as a Future Brand with Sainsbury’s it’s now listed in 7 of the major retailers (including Waitrose, Booths, Ocado, Boots the Chemist, Superdrug, Lloyds Pharmacy) with plans for more roll outs this year.
Founder Emma Heathcote-James says, “It’s wonderful for the team to be acknowledged in this way. There is still so much to do. We have always been mindful of our social and environmental impact as a business. This achievement has made all the hard work worth it and is a constant mission for the team to better ourselves year on year. To be acknowledged in this way takes our environmental efforts, story and brand to the next level. It also reinforces what we need to do going forward in order to become better in all aspects of the performance standards against which we are measured. As a business I believe we have a responsibility to constantly do better and to help improve the world and we will continue to educate about the importance of challenger brands, the Better Business Act, of being a BCorp, the critical need for UK manufacturing, the need for businesses to genuinely balance people, profit and planet at the heart all they do and most of all, the importance of kindness”.
Now in its 56th year, the Queen’s Awards for Enterprise are the most prestigious business awards in the country, with winning businesses able to use the esteemed Queen’s Awards Emblem for the next five years.