15 Years of Bramley - A Note From Chloë

What a 15 years it’s been – there has been laughter, there have been tears but most of all there has been fun.

I often refer to Bramley as my ‘first born’ (I have three younger children!) and it’s one of my proudest achievements. When I created Bramley for the bedrooms at The Beckford Arms back in 2009, I could only dream that it would be the business it is today.  I only had a couple of weeks to get it ready for the opening of the pub and I pulled in so many favours from suppliers and friends (thank you Gail for labelling all those bottles by hand!), it really was a crazy time.

I think my husband thought it was more of a ‘hobby’, but I secretly really believed in the products and slowly but surely the Bramley brand has grown...

There have been some ups and downs over the way, like in any business, and I thought I’d share some of them with you.

It’s always hard to manage stock and what we’ve always known (and prided ourselves on) is that  a hotel cannot, and must not, run out of shampoo.  We had a series of occasions where we had got incredibly close to not having enough stock, so we started to order in bottles.  What we didn’t realise is quite how many we had ordered, and I remember looking at the numbers and discovering that we had over 300,000 excess bottles.  I literally did not sleep that night.  Fortunately, they weren’t filled so it wasn’t as much of a disaster as it could have been, but it was pretty scary because it could easily have bankrupted us. 

On the positive side, we’ve been doing our sums as we approach our birthday and the figures that are coming through are ones to be really proud of – over 650,000 250ml and 1.2m 100ml bottles sold and we’ve shipped to over 56 countries worldwide!   It really does blow my mind to think that Bramley can be found in all those different places.

My proudest moment was when I received an email from HRH The Princess of Wales (the Duchess of Cambridge as she was then) asking if Bramley could help support her campaign to support families living in poverty during the pandemic.  Initially I thought it was a joke email until I double checked the sender’s email address!  It was an honour to be able to help and a real pinch-me moment to know that Kate actually knew about Bramley (maybe she’s used it at her local Gail’s Bakery….).

I love working with all our hotels, pubs and shops and the people behind them, so many that I can’t mention you all but you know who you are, you have been so incredibly supportive over the years and really believed in Bramley, thank you to you all.

We also have a big team of suppliers that we work with and who go the extra mile when we need them to, many of whom have been with us since the beginning, thank you to you for everything you do to support us and pulling it out the bag at the last minute.

I also have the most amazing team of people, both past and present, who work so hard on Bramley, and I couldn’t do it without them – we’ve had some fun times and I’m looking forward to many more.

What I love is that the products that I created 15 years ago have not changed at all and they are still my everyday favourite.  They really have stood the test of time and let’s hope we’ll still be here in 15 years.