Baarvet
On May 4th 2009 (a date seared into my brain) at 7.30pm we set out by car to visit a very close friend in Harlech, just 4 miles away, a trip of perhaps 15 minutes, when I had a Road to Damascus moment.
Lesley said, “Come on then, what do you want to do next ?”
“I really don’t know,” I replied, “but it will probably have to be something to do with wool because wool has no value”
“Like what?”
Then I was suddenly hit by a bolt of lightening on my Damascus road.
“Let’s reinvent the wool blanket,” I blurted out.
“What kind of wool blanket?” asked my wife?
“Oh I don’t know.” I replied. But then added, “Let’s stuff wool into a duvet”
“What?” she said, “You can’t stuff wool into a duvet and if you could no one would buy it because wool sounds heavy, itchy, and old fashioned like your grannies blanket.”
Just at that moment the same bolt of lightning came round for a second time and hit Lesley squarely between the eyes and she blurted out.
“But if you can stuff wool into a duvet we would have to call it something else…
“We’ll have to call it a Baa…vet!”
We arrived at our friend’s house and eagerly told them our idea and they thought it was fantastic. And so the Baavet was born.
All we had to do now was to get someone to make one. That should be easy!
…. And that was our first mistake.
No one we spoke to had ever heard of a wool duvet so I thought I had reinvented the wheel but my son, who is big into computers, quickly found that they made wool duvets in New Zealand. I was a little down hearted at first to find that my idea wasn’t original but at least the technology for making them obviously existed.
Full of naive enthusiasm our first port of call for help was the British Wool Marketing Board, they didn’t know of anyone that could make one for us but they gave us some very useful contacts, like the Wool Testing Authority who were very helpful in tracking down the best British wools to use for a duvet as not all wools are right for the job.
After several months searching it became obvious that there was no one in the UK that could manufacture our Baavets.
But eventually via numerous leads we arrived at the factory in Huddersfield, who had one of the few remaining wool carding lines left in the UK that could card wool (combing the wool) to the width we required. Although the owner was well beyond retirement age himself he still loved a challenge so he was keen to help us develop the product. But he had no knowledge of quilting, so then had to find someone who knew about quilting.
To cut a long story short the next 2 years was a whole series of trial and error and lots of tribulation and that’s when we made our second mistake!……..
We were sucked into the world of manufacturing as we thought with a little help we could make them ourselves. We bought a second hand multi-needle quilting machine and installed it in the factory. Creating, probably, the only wool quilting line in the UK at the time.
While the factory was struggling with the technical side of the initial stages of the process, my wife and I set up a small factory unit in Snowdonia to convert the rolls of quilt made in Huddersfield into the individual duvets. Her only experience of sewing was on a home sewing machine….. That was our third mistake as we had no idea which machines to buy or how to use them.
More trial and error, but eventually my wife became very competent at not only operating industrial sewing machines but also mastering many of the technical problems when things breakdown becoming something of a sewing machine engineer.
We launched our wool products on the internet with the help of my son and his social media skills and we have been amazed at the public’s response to our Baavets.
15 years down the line we took the huge leap of moving the entire process to North Wales. It had always been our intention to make everything as local as possible, but the lack of finance and technical know how stopped us from making that a reality. We have achieved that goal, with a new carding and quilting line in our own factory in Porthmadog we now have complete control of the manufacturing process.
It’s been a huge learning curve for all of us and we are still tweaking things to enable a smoother running of the machinery. We have also learned a great deal more about the technical qualities of wool and I can say quite categorically that wool it is far superior to polyester, feather or down duvets or for that matter silk duvets.
Wool is the finest fibre on the planet to sleep under. Wool is also excellent for asthma, eczema sufferers and for any one with overheating problems in bed.
During the ongoing process of trial and error our Baavet quilt design has changed several times and we now have a quilting pattern and fine carding which we believe is superior to other wool duvet products.
I would say that we probably make the finest duvet on the planet, well that’s what our customers keep telling us…and, if it wasn’t for their genuine appreciation of the quality of the product, we would have given up years ago when the going was really tough.
If you don’t believe me you can try one as we are that confident in our products. And we are the only company that will guarantee you your money back if it doesn’t give you the best nights sleep ever. That’s any duvet company not just wool duvet companies.
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