Bringing together the rural community with a blooming business
The Herefordshire village of Blakemere is home to Wiggly Wigglers, a farm-diversification business that now has an annual turnover of £2.5million. Ros Dodd meets chairman Heather Gorringe, a farmer's wife who has made her business flourish from a tiny venture selling worm composting kits to an extensive award-winning gardening mail order business with vast knock-on benefits for the local economy.
The winding lanes and expansive fields surrounding the tiny Herefordshire village of Blakemere suggest a farming community going about its business in time-honoured fashion. Yet in the midst of this rural backwater operates a rather remarkable, multi-million pound business.
Wiggly Wigglers, an innovative, natural gardening and lifestyle mail order company founded by chairman and marketing director Heather Gorringe, has its headquarters in converted outbuildings on Lower Blakemere Farm, run by Heather's husband Phil.
From humble beginnings, the company has grown – organically, to match its products and proclaimed ethos – into an award-winning enterprise with an annual turnover of more than £2.5million. It employs 20, mostly local staff, supplies customers all over the world, produces a 'hit' weekly podcast and bangs the drum for environmental issues, such as the protection of British fauna and flora, and the importance keeping rural economies alive and kicking.
"What I wanted to do from the outset was to create employment for myself and others, if possible, that allowed us to thrive within our community rather than having to commute to Hereford or beyond," explains Heather, an energetic woman in her early 40s and now a Nuffield Scholar.
The mother-of-one founded Wiggly Wigglers in 1990, initially supplying worms and wormeries to the local market. It was ground-breaking stuff, but not yet fashionable and for three years Heather struggled. The first time she showed off her worm composting kits at a gardening show at Birmingham's NEC, she was 'laughed out of the whole place'.
