Our CEO John Pearce (with apologies for the headline pun), caught up with young manufacturer and entrepreneur, Jamie Gray (pictured, left) of MiB member, Sow Easy, to think really ‘big’ about the tiny details of being a successful British maker.
From their production facility in Wexham, Buckinghamshire, Jamie and the team manufacture and distribute a range of innovative seed & plant-based promotional products including Seedsticks®, seeded paper, seed packets, grow kits and much more, including sustainable corporate gifts & giveaways that can help reduce the ecological footprint of any business. Developed through years of innovations and multiple machinery iterations, from the 1940s matchbook idea, each ‘matchstick’ in the custom-printed matchbook book contains a seed. Just pop in soil to grow a matchstick garden!
A mere stone’s throw from where owner Jamie Gray was brought up and almost within earshot of his old secondary school, Jamie invited me for a guided tour of his new premises and introduced me to his growing team of marketing and manufacturing professionals. Every manufacturing site is different but Sow Easy really is unique in ‘sow’ many ways. I was informed that although the principal production machinery on site, whilst being compact and low-noise level, can be observed, but is not to be photographed. Once I saw it all working, it wasn’t easy to resist the temptation to snap videos and images, which is what I would normally do at most members’ premises. Jamie explained why he prefers to keep his machinery out of the public gaze.
“Like all great manufacturing machinery, there is an element of ‘Heath-Robinson’ here, with our 'Mark I' as we call it. Subject to countless modifications and improvements over the years, they make it what it is today. We consider it to be as valuable to the business as our intellectual property. We are doubling our capacity later this year, with a newer machine but that too is being adapted to our needs and is still in the testing phase.”
Jamie invited me to return to Sow Easy later in the year to see the newly developed machine fully up and running. He also shared with me some of his business philosophy and what he most cares about being a (fairly) young manufacturing leader.
“I never sit still – always looking to the future of our sector and to see where the new opportunities are. And of course, I keep one eye on the competition to stay ahead of the curve on innovation in gifting, giveaways and responsible making. I’m relatively new to leadership in this sector and still think of myself as an entrepreneur trying to be the very best, we can be as a young team. I do love this industry and I’m still fascinated by the challenges it brings with it. It goes without saying that maintaining profitability in manufacturing these days is by far the greatest overall challenge.”
Having seen with my own eyes, how a sophisticated machine can create such a compact, high-value product almost entirely by itself, it will never cease to amaze me how diverse creative and ingenious the British manufacturing sector really is, when you can lift the lid on any one of our 2000+ members licensed to use the official Made in Britain collective mark. Hopefully one day, Jamie and the team will share some filming footage of how they make it look so easy.
Sow Easy were commissioned to supply the ‘MiB official Message Matchbooks’ for Made in Britain participation in all three party conferences this year.
By Made in Britain 1 year ago | From members