Enjoying the sweet smell of success

For just over a year ago Claire and Gareth McKeever moved their Pure Lakes business from Staveley to the tiny village near Hawkshead following a four-year plan to build their own 6,000sq ft manufacturing centre.  You can smell the business where they make their skincare, body lotions and home fragrance products long before opening the door...

The story of how the couple bought the business a decade ago from founders Sandra and Iain Blackburn has been told many times. Gareth, a prospective Conservative candidate was canvassing in Cumbria when he met Claire, who was visiting her family (she was working as an actress and salsa dancer in Paris.) They married, lived in London, had a son and then decided to move to the Lakes to run a business – they were customers of Pure Lakes and approached them about buying it. “We bought half of it in 2014, I quit my job, we moved up, Claire did an apprenticeship with Sandra and we bought the other half in 2016,” says Gareth. Sandra and Iain work for them one day a week.

“We loved the sustainable ethos of Pure Lakes, the fact the ingredients are plant-based, biodegradable, the smell is all essential oils and it’s not synthetic, the packaging is sustainable and traceable and everything is bought ethically.

“When I was standing as a candidate here I discovered Pure Lakes and I said to my mum (who runs a B&B in Northern Ireland) ‘This product is amazing’ so they used it well before we became owners of it. Although we had no experience of making it we had quite a bit of experience of using it and I strongly think that you’ve got to start with product in any business. If you haven’t got the product right then you can forget it.  You might make money but it’s going to be very dispiriting,” Gareth says.

Their staff who make the products and the customers who buy them are central to the McKeever vision, “We are in a very privileged position to run a business the way we’ve always wanted it run… and it’s really challenging!” says Gareth. “Our team is phenomenal and we want them to thrive. Where we live is decimated by second homes and holiday homes. We have children in the local primary school and when they started there were 60 plus children and today there’s 42 or 43. Young people can’t afford to live here, work here, there’s not enough affordable housing for them. It’s a huge issue and we have this opportunity to have our business here and create jobs. Job creation is a massive driver for us,” he says.

“We are very much a relational business rather than a transactional one. As a banker I worked in Japanese markets and they don’t look at short term profits as a goal, they think about the shareholders (i.e., Claire and I), the suppliers, they think about the customers and they think about the employees and no business can operate without all four of these so what is underpinning us is that those four groups get treated fairly and properly and respectfully. When we bought the business those philosophies were very much there. We are also absolutely fanatical about getting the highest quality ingredients so when we are developing a product we start with making the product the best possible one we can and then look at the margin at the very end and try to find a way  we can make money from it! We feel that if you start with the margin you are going to box yourself in and automatically compromise with a product that isn’t so good. There’s no compromise. We make the best possible product you can make.”

Pure Lakes now makes thousands of litres of product a year and supplies 300 to 400 hospitality establishments, many quite small. All the items are made and labelled by hand and shipped out by DPD on a daily basis.  The shampoos are created in a cake mixer which can only produce 10 litres at a time. “Some hotels order 100 litres so that’s two days’ work,” says Claire. “The viscosity changes when you use larger machines so we are still experimenting. Our ethos is to hire someone else and keep with the smaller machine,” says Gareth. “If it’s a huge order we tell people this won’t be a quick turnaround.”

Their biggest expense, apart from staff, is essential oils, some of which cost hundreds of pounds for small bottles of sustainably grown rose or neroli. They pride themselves on using ingredients from ethical sources – shea butter from a women’s co-op in Burkina Faso, for example. They also have a refill service where customers can either send them their empties (there’s a substantial discount) or for locals in the South Lakes they can drop them off at Rinaldo’s at Plumgarths near Staveley.

When Claire and Gareth bought the business there was a full range of bath and body and skincare products; they have discontinued some and introduced  others. “We are so grateful for the business that we bought, it was so robust and we were buying from great people,” says Gareth. Four years ago they started making home diffusers, during Covid the Home Spa range was added and last year they launched their candle range after two years of development.

“There’s a lower margin on the candles, it would have been easy to go for soy wax but we worried about the deforestation implications so we use coconut and rapeseed and use 10 per cent essential oils and that has a real cost to us. We didn’t want to compromise and we hope that as the market builds for our candles then we could price up a bit. That’s a typical Pure Lakes journey,” he says.

When they realised they were outgrowing their Staveley base they spent two years planning, remortgaging their house, using their savings and getting a Rural Payments Agency grant contributing to  per cent of the cost to turn the site of an old wood yard on land owned by Claire’s dad, Adam Naylor, into a high-tech centre with more than six times the space of their previous headquarters. This spring they started holding candle and soap making workshops there. Visitors choose their own blend of fragrances, much like organisations including Westmorland Ltd and Grasmere Gingerbread have worked with them to create bespoke private label brands. “These workshops allow us to showcase what we do, we are hoping to attract people who come to the Lakes and want to do something on a rainy day… we are hoping to tap into that market. One day I would love to expand it more and have a shepherd’s hut and offer treatments,” says Claire. “We make everything 100 per cent by hand and we are proud of that,” says Gareth.

Their business income splits roughly into four – wholesale/retail including online; white label (creating goods labelled for individual businesses); private label (bespoke products) and hospitality, which Gareth says has a minimum margin but is a shop window for people to try their products. “It’s a brilliant route to market because it allows our products to sit in a room with the customer and they can try the product. We make a minimum margin on it but it’s a brilliant route to market. The opposite side in terms of margin is b to c with people buying online direct from us, but how do they find out about us, they stay in a hotel and try our products.  It’s symbiotic,” he says.

Brexit took its toll with the rising cost and complications of shipping to Europe, but they say most of their overseas orders only come from people who have visited the Lakes and tried their products. During Covid, like many businesses, they saw online orders increase (they still remain stronger than before Covid) and they also launched a sanitiser within a couple of weeks of the first lockdown and sent them out to care homes and NHS surgeries. That led to Gareth becoming a trustee of Care Support South Lakes charity; Claire is a trustee of Lakeland Housing Trust helping people get on the housing ladder.

With three children under the age of 11 they say they will often work late into the night to ensure they have ‘family time’ during the day. Family is a key driver for them -  when they were looking for artwork for their World Heritage range they used watercolours from Claire’s grandmother Paddy (Patricia) Naylor which is also the glorious floral wallpaper in the reception of their Far Sawrey building. It’s there that the team of 16 down tools at 10.30am every day for a cup of tea and then eat lunch together every day – something which Claire introduced to ensure everyone took their full breaks.  Claire’s mum Marianne also proofreads all the packaging and the newsletter which has 15,000 subscribers.

When the couple bought the business it had one member of staff and a  turnover of five figures. In the early years, following a rebrand, turnover increased by 100 per cent. Now turnover (not including the pandemic years) has seen an increase of 20 per cent yoy. “We had a vision but not a five-year plan," says Claire. “It’s been such a learning curve.”

“Essentially we see the non-financial value as well as the financial value and the non-financial benefits as well as the financial benefits. They are all really important, we are trying to create employment in a socially responsible way and we feel we can have a business that will make us money and allow us to have a nice income and at the same time do those things, the two are not mutually exclusive. Customers that get that and agree with that are the best fit for us,” says Gareth.

So what does the future hold?  By the end of 2024 they hope to launch a new spa range and in the long term hold daily workshops and employ more people. “As a business you need to keep innovating and moving ahead. We want to be more of a destination, where people can visit, try the product, make the product. We are a business rooted in the heart of the Lake District and we want to celebrate that.”