Growing Dalefoot Compost appoints new sales & marketing manager
Marketing expert Paula Davies, formally Brand Marketing Manager at Lowe Alpine, joins the company this autumn. She will be helping Dalefoot Compost’s owners Simon Bland and Jane Barker to expand the Cumbrian-based business, selling to premium trade outlets as well as developing new products for eco-conscious gardeners.
Paula said: “I feel privileged to be invited to join the team at Dalefoot Composts at such an exciting time for the business. What I’m looking forward to most is spending time with our retail partners to develop new niche products and services focused on meeting the needs of our customers.”
Simon said: “Paula brings new skills and experience at an important stage in our business’ growth – we are very pleased to have her join Dalefoot Composts.”
Dalefoot Composts’ unique peat free product range is made from British sheep’s wool and bracken. Its premium quality composts offer a consistent performance with reliable results. The newly-extended product range includes composts for sowing seeds, potting-on, filling tubs and baskets, top dressing borders, improving clay soils and even ericaceous planting – everything a gardener requires throughout the year.
These new peat free products, for the discerning market, are unique and made to traditional recipes founded upon “garden wisdom” using natural ingredients that are not only renewable but also provide benefits to the British landscape and upland farmers. Innovatively the composts use sheep’s wool, ideal for water retention and an excellent slow-release source of nitrogen, and bracken, a naturally invasive plant but when harvested proves to be very high in potash and provides a wide range of health-giving minerals and trace elements to plants.
The composts have both a strong identity, with very attractive packaging, and a growing loyal customer following. During recent trials Wool Compost came out tops in BBC Gardeners' World magazine ‘potting up and growing on’ compost trial* beating seven other leading peat-free and loam-based composts. It has also been shortlisted as an RHS Chelsea Product of the Year.
Dalefoot’s sustainable range includes a Wool Compost and an Ericaceous Potting mix, double-strength Ericaceous and Wool Composts that can be mixed with garden soil, Lakeland Gold for clay-busting and the recently added Wool Compost for Seeds.
The composts are made at Dalefoot in Cumbria by farmer Simon and his wife Jane, an environmental scientist. They started the business using the wool from their own flock on their 120-acre farm and the ‘ wool-clip’ of neighbouring hill farmers, along with bracken from the Lake District fells surrounding their land, which is also a by-product of the couple’s environmental and habitat restoration work. With demand for the composts exceeding capacity, fleeces and bracken are being sourced now throughout the UK.
Sold currently by mail order and a small number of nurseries, Dalefoot is looking to expand compost distribution through premium retail trade outlets. Trade prices are available plus VAT and a very reasonable delivery charge anywhere in the UK. Minimum orders are 80 bags delivered shrink-wrapped and on a pallet. Mixed pallet orders are accepted. Point of sale material and leaflets are available to assist with displays along with a full technical back-up.
www.dalefootcomposts.co.uk Tel: 01931 713281 Email: info@dalefootcomposts.co.uk