38. The chemistry of growth: turning a mould problem into a thriving business | Byron Dixon OBE

0:00Welcome to All About Business with me, James Reed, the podcast that covers everything about business, management and leadership.

0:14More than 92 million tons of textile waste is produced globally every year, and mostly because bacteria is making our clothes stink. One British innovator found the fix, and the world's biggest brands are buying in. Joining me today on All About Business is Byron Dixon, the founder and CEO of Microfresh, an innovative technology that eliminates the invisible mold growing on your clothes and furniture. In this episode, we discuss the key to getting big brands to switch to your product, the steps he took to grow his customer base, and what the UK can learn from the Scandinavians. Well, today on All About Business, I couldn't be more delighted than to welcome Byron Dixon, OBE, who's traveled to talk to us today from Leicester.

1:02Byron is an amazing entrepreneur, innovator, and scientist. He's the CEO and founder of a company called Microfresh. That's right. And you're going to tell us all about it, aren't you, Byron? I am. Where I'd like to begin is, what does Microfresh do? Or what is the problem that Microfresh sets out to solve? and it's ironic that you almost slip the tongue said microsoft because lots of people do that we have had microsoft on the podcast right okay so what micro fresh does in i think it's very simple is that it stops the growth of microbes that's the boring bit so any micro freshed surface means microbes can't grow microbes microbes are microbes are fungi fungi this size not literally this size i'm relative bacteria this size or viruses which are this size and that's what michael fresh does do you know that joke why did the mushroom go to the party yes yeah you don't want to say the punch you're gonna say it go on i used to say it because they will say you know the joke because he's a fun guy he's a fun guy so so you're out to get these fun guy in a sense we are and so how did that begin what sort of an immediate problem or what sort of issue did you first see and think oh I could do something about that yeah and James that's a question a lot of people ask they say why are you doing that yeah the short story is I drifted into I could do chemistry at school that's all I could do and I went to what's called a comprehensive school and a sync school but I could do chemistry so I left school I approached Zeneca for a job right the nearest is before it was a pharmaceutical business so zeneca and it was a proper chemical business i call it the nearest one to me was in loughborough and that was the leather and shoe division of zeneca supplying chemicals to the tanneries and shoe factories all over the world so i worked there for 10 years doing customer service looking at leather looking at problems with leather and shoes and i got head-hunted by echo the shoe company which is in denmark so i didn't realize the job was in denmark i accepted the job as something new so this is why you can speak danish that's why i speak you were just talking to one of my colleagues which he was quite impressed that's right uh so yeah so you went to work in den so you didn't know the job was in denmark no so i got this job offer and i thought that's great and then the guy who offered me the job the head of human resources i'm still friends with today he said oh do you want to fly from east midlands or heathrow and i said where to and he said well denmark of course but i thought the job was in london oh so i thought why not when i went off to denmark for four years i worked for echo fantastic company absolutely fantastic company and the difference was zeneca was top down management i'm not saying either's right or wrong they're just very different and when i went to echo it's bottom up so you're almost like an entrepreneur in a business uh and i was responsible for the finishes around the whole world so every for every shoe for every shoe and then i worked close with the tanner how many shoes do they make i mean they did about 20 million pairs a year back then not 20 years so that's 40 million shoes yeah so you're responsible for making sure they're all absolutely they all looked perfect felt perfect make the most of the leather nothing happened they didn't finish didn't come off didn't change color i was responsible for the whole lot and given complete freedom because of my background uh and i loved it danish businesses are interesting aren't they because i mean i've been researching danish business for a book i'm writing um on philanthropy companies a lot of them have charities absolutely substantial states and they have very enlightened management i felt like a chrysalis here and then i felt like a butterfly when i went to echo it was that different dead mark's a great country i've still got great friends there you pay a lot of tax right and it's very dark in the winter so i came back after four years started my own leather chemicals business and then i remember that echo shoes when they were made in asia used to go moldy when they were shipped to the west so i was struggling back then i was pretty skint moved back to Leicester living in a little terrace and I thought why don't I make a product that stops the shoes going moldy in transit that you can just put on in Asia spray on and it protects them in transit and that became Microfresh.

5:12For my benefit really could you just explain what Microfresh is as a product how it works how people engage with it? Yeah sure so when I made the first Microfresh that's a liquid that you spray and then when we got to other applications so the the the manufacturers buy it as a liquid we ship it from the uk to our overseas offices we've got 16 all around the world then the manufacturers buy it locally so you've got the liquid you've got a concentrate that goes into textiles because that's a wet process when they're manufacturing so you don't need all that water basically we then also have a powder version from powder coating onto metals and the pellet which goes into plastics so the four versions are a liquid a concentrated liquid a powder and a pellet and this is all going into different manufacturing that's right that's right to keep products fresh that's right so if it's plastic products that are non-porous you would add the pellets at the point of manufacture so when you extrude the plastic it's in the plastic and that stops some bacteria on the surface that's right on the surface that's right so it has a wide number of applications and and one of the important ones is obviously in fashion and clothes.

6:27Yeah. And we think a lot about plastic waste. I mean, this has come up on the podcast before, the problem with plastics, but there's also a problem with fabrics, isn't there? There is a problem, yeah. And the circular economy, if you go to any charity shop, there's a lot of clothing. So a lot of people take clothing or throw clothing away because it smells. So, oh, it wears out. And it's widely known that laundering wears fabrics. It just does. I mean, I saw the CEO of Proxer & Gamble on TV, and he said, that's why we invented it. The two go hand in hand. So the less you launder, the longer the fabric lasts.

7:04You launder to clean fabrics, of course, clothing. I'm talking about bedding, towels. So that won't change. But you don't need to kill bacteria if it's micro-freshed. So you don't need to go to the high temperatures. So you can actually cool wash at 20 or even 30. You don't need to go to 40 or 60. That's if it's been micro-freshed at manufacturing. That's right. That's right. So you can use it for longer and it's going to last longer. That's right. You wash at lower temperature, it lasts longer, which means less goes to landfill and also to thrown away, basically. So this is really good for sustainability.

7:37It's a proven, tangible sustainability benefit that's easily understood by the consumer. You don't need to kill bacteria. The only reason you wash at the higher temperatures is to kill bacteria because you can get things clean at 30. But traditionally, people have washed at higher temperatures, even going back to boil wash in the 70s, I think it was. But if you don't need to kill bacteria, all you need to do is remove the dirt, and that's done with gentle detergent and agitation. And it uses less power as well. A lot less power, less detergent, less concrete, and usually less water. Well, that's amazing.

8:08So it's sustainable in all sorts of different directions. It is, it is. And I wanted to be a chemistry teacher because I thought chemistry is a bit of a, you know, pie in the sky thing for a lot of kids. But one thing I try and do with this business is to make it simple to understand. So the Microfresh name has got simple to understand tangible benefits, as I said, lower temperature, less water, less detergent, less energy. So fresh is easy to understand. Micro means? I can't see it. Microscopic. Microscopic, yeah. So Microfresh. We have a brand director that's ex-Sarchie and Sarchie. He's on the board, as I was telling you about.

8:46and everybody thinks he thought of the name because they say it's such a cool name but it was i worked at satchi and satchi once i'll claim it you can claim it but yeah i just thought i just thought it's clean and you can't see it so micro fresh yeah yeah that's i mean that's a good start in branding generally isn't it yeah and i know nothing about branding and i mean nothing i just made it the name because i thought it says what it does and in time what's come around is it's proven to be a great easy to understand brand and next when next first launched in 2011 the reason they wanted the name on the shoes is because they said it just says what it is so that was the tag that's the swing tag yeah if it was you know dixon antimicrobials they'd have said no we don't want to tag because somebody's got to then look at what that means yeah whereas micro fresh just says what it is so you invented this product yeah so you use your own science that's right chemistry knowledge yeah in fact i still have some of my old open university equipment which i used to make the product how does it work once it do so how does it stop this from happening yeah so what i wanted i was clear in my mind that i didn't want something that kills fungi kills microbes because that's quite easy you can do that with bleach or vinegar you know quite nasty chemicals so if you look at anything that kills mold in store there's quite often some quite hazardous symbols attached to them but i wanted something that was non-hazardous and something that just prevents the growth so if in everyday language microbes land on the surface and they can't reproduce so they suffocate right so they don't proliferate and you don't get all the deficiencies that associate with microbes i.e the growth of mold but i didn't realize at the time it also stops bacteria so things like e.coli salmonella listeria and also i played football for university and one of the lads in the team said if it stops mold it should stop bacteria and bacteria causes odors oh so we tested it inside the shoes and they didn't smell oh so this replaced what were called odor eaters is that right yeah yeah yeah because i remember those when that's right my youth that's right yes so nobody pays extra for non-moldy shoes that's just a given right but when retailers saw that by protecting the shoes in transit they also had a sellable benefit to the consumer of the shoes won't smell that turned our business around oh amazing so then you had lots of other applications i guess from this technology that's right yeah that came from the bacteria side yeah so when i realized it stops odors and then we realized it works in textiles because it was meant for leather right and we test it in clothing and in textiles and we did a deal with john lewis back in 2014 and they said to us how many washes does it do and i said i actually don't know and they test it and came back and said it does 50 washes and i said it's that good and They said, absolutely.

11:31It's still over 80 % efficacious after 50 washes. So we then realised that we had a product and a brand you could put into textiles that means they will last longer. Right. Because you can wash at lower temperature. You don't need to kill microbes and all the benefits that go with that. Less detergent, less water, less energy. So that is good news if you don't want to have lots of textile waste and associated landfill. That's right. Results of fast fashion. Absolutely. So you're very much focused on the other end of... That's right. But bear in mind, this was 2009, and several retailers said, we don't want that.

12:07We want people to buy things and built-in obsolescence, as you call it. But then sustainability became a thing, and they said, where's that guy that was here a few weeks ago? That cheeky guy from Leicester. Oh, I see. So you were not exactly pushing it at an open door to start with. Not at all. Not at all, in fact. Beyond the shoe business, I suppose. Beyond the shoe business, that's right. It was a completely closed door, and everybody said why would we want to do that right which doesn't reflect that well on that sector does it but now that you've persuaded them that this is a good that's right that's right and so we've now become a brand that means it kind of means sustainability and it means they care about sustainability so what are there any other applications you mentioned ecoli and i mean other food related applications yeah so the main one is health care right because one of the reasons is hospital acquired infections hais so people know that once you go into hospital it's quite often And you can come out sicker than when you went in because of what you pick up when you're in there.

13:00And you probably remember... That's definitely a fear, isn't it? It's a fear, that's right. And you remember MRSA. Well, that was a classic example. That was a sort of superbug, was it? Superbug, that's right, that's right. And there's a bacteria called Staphylococcus aureus. And this was what's called metacillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, MRSA. And you could pick it up in hospital very, very easily. And it's very deadly. So an application for Microfresh was on bed linen, on towels, where it just couldn't couldn't reproduce so is that sprayed on the bed no no it's fixed in when they when it's made at manufacture so when you dye the fabric you add micro freshness fixed in so it's all it's all at the beginning of the beginning of the production process so how many customers have you got now what's the wow that's a good question uh i would say around the world 200 250 big producers of yeah fabrics fabric leather products and where's your biggest market currently it's um bedding right we're a massive ingredient brand in bedding so you can go to john lewis now and buy bedding with micro fresh technology and several other retailers but what is growing is the call for mold reduction social housing so talk me through that what does that mean yeah so i grew up in a council house and my mom was a single parent with five children and mold was just a thing right then everybody had it you just wiped it off with a bit of bleach Now it's much worse.

14:20Well, the mould's worse. In what way? It's a lot more, if you go into some social housing, you see mould. It can be whole walls. It can be whole rooms, which you never used to see when we were kids. And is that because the housing's deteriorated or the mould's got more powerful? Generally, the housing's deteriorated. Okay. Yeah. I mean, when I lived in Denmark, as cold as it was in winter, you had to have the window open to sleep at night because the house is that well insulated. Whereas here we have a lot of old houses, a lot of old stock. So mould is a huge problem. And 10 years ago, we did some trials with Aston University and the HSE with Innovate UK funding.

14:52Right. Because I thought, will it work on walls? Friends tried it and they said it absolutely doesn't come back. The biggest problem with mould is it comes back. Killing it is quite easy. So I thought, I don't want to go to market with a product where your friends say it's wonderful. Because that's like your mum saying you're a good boy. Well, my mum doesn't say that. Did she say that? No, she doesn't. Oh, right. That would be consistent with quite a lot of our guests. That's right. That's right. But yeah, so we went to Innovate UK. They part-funded a two-year testing schedule. That's for the benefit of our listeners.

15:25What does Innovate UK do? Because it's quite interesting you use that. It's government funding. It's out there, isn't it, for them? And it's government money, government funding, and it funds innovative projects. There's a bit more to it than that. But you have to apply. You have to apply. And if they like what you're proposing. If they like what you're proposing, and it can create jobs or save lives or benefit the economy, they will help to fund it. Which is fantastic. It's really, really good. Well, back then it was grant funding. Now they do a bit of debt or a bit of equity funding. But we would never have been able to do that without the funding.

15:55And it's match funding. So we matched over the two years on average 50%. So we put in 125K. They put in 125K. But at the end, we had first year report from the HSE saying it absolutely works on walls, on plaster, and even if you paint over it and the second year was astern university ran a trial in a shower room throughout the whole of the winter and it showed there was absolutely no mold growth so this hopefully will be widely applied that's right so it's dangerous this mold isn't it black mold it is dangerous yeah we breathe it in and stuff yeah yeah it's the cause of a lot of respiratory issues i lived in denmark as you know and denmark northern europe mold is almost classed as a pathogen whereas over here it never has been until tragically i think it was four years ago now a young lad died up in rochdale and they realized it was because of the damp because of the mold so this young lad was called al-abishak and a lot's happened since then i remember that it was shocking yeah it's shocking so from this october it's going to become law there's a law that will say if you have damper mold the landlord has to respond i think it's within 48 hours that's coming my daughter in glasgow who's a student there was told that it was her problem not the land yeah it's good to know that yeah yeah that's uh that's that's quite often they say it's the way you live and you know you can't have the window open the windows you have to have the window open in the winter because of it i think yeah yeah not because it was too warm you know we grew up in a council house the last if i got caught opening the window in the winter when the heating's on my nose would be even flatter as you know no one would say right well i'm glad you so that's an amazing range of applications yeah so i mean i'd like to ask you a bit i mean you said you were good at chemistry at school you went to a comprehensive you said it was a sync school it was doesn't sound like the ideal place to start a journey to become a scientist and an innovator so how did you do that that's a good question i think i mean people around me will say byron's you know hyperactive and i always have been and when i was at school i found school a bit dull and i could do things but i just found it in general a bit dull then when i was about 10 and i saw chemistry and i thought you can burn things and get a grade so you can blow things up you like the excitement of that that's right you can get a grade blowing stuff up and burning things and you know you were doing practical chemistry were you absolutely they had a lab then yeah yeah yeah and i thought this is absolutely for me but also james the thing is i actually understood it and i don't to this day i don't know how but i understood it i could see atomic models in my head i could i just got it i just thought why does everybody else find this so difficult so it sort of mirrored your abilities in a way yeah yeah and i just i just got it i did my o level um and i was doing the exam and i just thought this is straightforward this is like saying put your right leg in front of your left and call it walking and i did a level it was the same i just thought this is why is this a thing it's just obvious it's the world is sort of thing i mean i suppose that's true i mean that's what chemistry is ultimately yeah yeah yeah i did i just thought why are people going on about this being so hard because i just got it and then uh but i couldn't afford to go to university so i got a job so you got a job but you went to university later interestingly i did so what did you do i did so i got to my mid-20s and i thought some of my friends from school had come back to leicester with degrees and i thought i'd like a degree what can i get a degree in i know chemistry so i looked around and i found the open university because i thought i had a job but so you were working at what's this yeah style was the division it was called style stahl which was a dutch division of zeneca and uh i wrote off to the open university and i did open university and is that something you'd recommend to other people absolutely yeah situation like that halfway through it i was just off to denmark but you could carry on i guess from abroad yeah and because i was traveling a lot with my job i i had more time to do it i was in airports or long haul flights out to asia so i'd do assignments on planes which people found quite interesting.

20:02That's hard work. I mean you're doing a job, you're studying. I mean that's pretty intensive I imagine. So how long did that take you to get the degree? Nine years. Nine years. Took me nine years. And do you feel that was helpful as well in terms of developing your ideas for the business or was it aside from that? In that phase I went through a huge amount of personal development because I grew up with, let's just say, on a council estate. So you can imagine the sort of people I had around me. Then I randomly got this job. You said you were one of five siblings. Yeah, that's right. What number are you out of interest?

20:30I'm the second youngest. The second youngest. Yeah, I'm the second youngest. Do you think that has a bearing on how you are? I mean, I'm always interested in this. I don't think so. Maybe the other is what I say. Some people say, oh, you behave like the eldest. I don't know if there's any truth in that. Yeah, my oldest brother, people say he behaves like the eldest, as in he's very sensible and smart and straightforward. I'm the random maverick. I'm the youngest boy. Right, okay. As kids, we had those fairy tales. You know, they typically had the three sons, and the youngest one was always the coolest one.

21:04So I used to play that. That's what you told people, didn't you? I did. All right, yeah. So, yeah. There might be something in that, yeah. Yeah. But maybe there's something in that you felt that you could go and try things a bit more, or you were a bit more free in a sense. Yeah, yeah. And I've always been the free spirit, always. I've tried anything new, tried anything different, go to different places, different countries. Yeah, the Denmark thing. As I say, the personal development, because by the time I'd been to Denmark, done my degree, done a whole amount of traveling, because in Echo, you travel all the time.

21:35You're in Slovakia. You think, I'm going back on Friday. You wake up Friday morning, there's an envelope under your hotel room, saying you now need to go to Brazil. Here's your ticket. And you were going there to oversee a batch of product. That's right, to see, yeah, shoes or leather. So I came back to England as a completely different person. i spoke and understood several languages as you've seen today so you've seen danish what else can you speak so i can get by in i can understand swedish the nordic uh scandinavian languages i can understand german because i live quite close to germany i live two kilometers from the border i spent a lot of time in portugal and italy so the latin languages i can again pick up i mean i hate to say this but this is kind of being closed off to young people now because of brexit completely which is such a shame i give it all that's help the help that's given you and i did it at the right time because 20 years ago if you went to portugal you had to learn portuguese whereas now everybody speaks english in the whole world which i do think it's good but i think it's a bit of a shame because i i had to get by in i mean i was in the restaurant last night and i said goodbye and thank you to four different people in the restaurant waiters generally and they're always brazilians that was portuguese there was a chilian girl so spanish there was uh an arabic guy so that was chocran and there was an italian yeah it was an italian restaurant they all thought that was hilarious well so yeah that's so so does that help you today with your business because you're you said you deal in different countries around the world yeah yeah yeah so we are truly global so people speak english but they do like it when you speak their own language absolutely yeah yeah so That's a good skill to develop, you would say.

23:10Even that willing. But also what I learned in my time at Echo, the owner of Echo was a massively inspirational guy, Carl Toosby. And we had the same birthday, which was ironic, in the whole company. When was that? February the 23rd. You and Carl shared the same birthday. Yeah, that's right. So what did you do? Did he celebrate? Did he invite you for a coffee? Kind of, yeah. Did he? Go to his house on my birthday. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's nice. It was a bit random. So he started that company? Yeah, he started Echo from scratch. And so you obviously knew him personally. I met him when I went to Echo.

23:42Yeah. But did you learn much from him? Loads. Interesting. Oh, yeah. So working for an entrepreneur like that was educational. Massively. And when I was leaving, he said to me, don't get a job. He said, you shouldn't get a job. You're not the sort of person that gets a job. You should start your own business. And he said, now you've got an international network, which I didn't have before I went to Echo. So I came back, started my own business. And I guess he became a customer. Yeah, he did. But I fell flat on my face for the first few years because nobody bought Microfresh because it was about sustainability.

24:14So I had five years with zero turnover. Oh, pushing at those doors that wouldn't open. Yeah, pushing at those doors. Five years of zero turnover. Five years of zero turnover. So we're establishing quite a few things about you, Byron. I mean, chemists and linguists, but pretty determined. I mean, that's telling me. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You were not a quitter, though, are you? I'm not a quitter, no. And I'm not afraid of failure as well. So why not? I mean, because that's a haunt some people. Yeah, I think naturally I'm a creative person. When I say creative, I don't mean like an artist, but I mean I like to build things.

24:44So I'm not scared of starting again. So I've never been afraid of everything crashing. And that's why, as entrepreneurs, we take risks. And I take some big risks. Because if you don't try, you don't know. That's right. And the risk is, the bigger the risk for me, the bigger the thrill. The biggest risk or the biggest failure is actually not trying, I always think. And I always say, I treat things like a plunge pool. So just hold your nose and jump in. It's going to hurt. It's going to... Well, you're expecting it to be cold. Sure. That's because of your time in Denmark. It's not always cold. That's right.

25:15Yeah, I'm not the sort to be standing around the edge just dipping my toes in going, oh, it's a bit cold. I'll just go straight in. Saying that, when I'm on holiday, I don't go into the cold sea. So in practice, I don't do it. But in theory, it gets me through. But in your business life, you do. So you were five years. So what was the sort of breakthrough then? When did it suddenly turn? The breakthrough was I pitched all the retailers. Nobody's interested. And then I got a call from Next. Who were up in Leicester? In Leicester. Yeah. And I'd been to all the people down here. M &S has saved me the whole lot.

25:46And they said, can you come and see us? And I said, yeah. And they said, can you go through that costing again? And I thought, that's an odd question because I've been here like two years ago. I went through everything. So I went through the costing, what it cost them to micropress a pair of shoes. And they came back and said, right, we're going to run a trial. And that was 2011. so 2011 they ran girls back to school shoes with microfresh technology and they said we'll need your swing tags and i said yeah sure thinking i haven't got any swing tags by the time this comes around i will have so if you're watching the next people you know and they launched girl shoes in 2011 back to school girls really successful and they came back said we're going to launch boys and girls the year afterwards so 2012 all their back to school shoes were microfreshed and they still are today and they're a hugely successful company next and obviously an important customer So their calculation when they said he ran the costs was that they must have been losing product or there must have been some sort of trade-off where they could see by using Microfresh.

26:41That's right. They would have better economics. That's right. That's right. And I don't know, maybe something happened the year before and they'd lost market share and somebody internally said, we need something, a differentiator. And they thought, where's that guy? So that was 2011, 2012. So he remembered you from two years before. Two years before, yeah. There's a real message there. I mean, I'm often telling people it's not a question of if you're going to make the sale, it's when. Keep going. Keep going. This is a very good example of that. Yeah, keep going. If you've got a good product or you've got a good service.

27:11In fact, when I pitched to them, there were two questions I asked in the first one. One was we don't sell smelly shoes. We don't. Yeah. They're not smelly usually when you buy them. No, that's right. Thanks to you probably. That's right. And they just said there's no demand. But then two years later, they came back and said, so something happened in those two years, which I've never been party to, where they came back and said, let's try it. And then 2014, retailers do a thing called comp shopping. They go around to the stores. So we got 2014 Tesco, Debenhams and Sainsbury's came to us and said, we want to launch Microfresh on our back to school shoes.

27:43When you say, well, they're comparing what the others are doing. Yeah. And they can see that Next were doing this. That's right. So once you've got one, the others line up. Yeah, it's like a domino effect. They see that, especially when it's a market leader like Next, I suppose. So that's quite a good strategy for someone starting out absolutely you want to you know if you could get one customer who would it be to encourage the others so to speak i've got a question for you oh yes go on yeah well they came back to me because i pitched to men's shoes sports shoes uh why do you think next picked back to school why did they pick back to school to me it was a random for the shoe range yeah um because it's a particular time of year no it's much simpler because i didn't think of this but they did because they're worn every day okay so the only equivalent in adults is safety shoes if you were yes yes makes sense otherwise we wear different shoes every day so you're micro fresh yeah you said another company that starts with micro and i'm trying now to not say it you put that in my your micro fresh uh service or product is to stop the shoes smelling after a period of time that's right yeah so it's not about when they arrive in the shop it's what they're like that's right months later so in where they won't smell so the dual benefit is they treat them in asia anyway that will protect them in transit but also they won't smell in where so two reasons school shoes are because the reason i said because it's september is back to school because i thought maybe they get hot in august and you know bacteria like that but it's not that it's just it's through wearing that they get hotter obviously by people wearing them every that's right so you wear them every day they either grow out the more they start to smell they buy a new pair so if they don't smell especially teenagers i don't know teenagers that's right when i remember being in school it's a sustainability story so it's good for parents as well it's absolutely good for parents for the purse and next i've got to say they're the innovative ones that said we're going to push this push this envelope and say it's good for parents because before that the resistance that we had was retailers saying that means we'll sell less product yeah that's not a good way of you want to do the right thing for your customer that's right well that's how you build a sustainable business i would argue yeah oh that's an amazing story yeah so and i like the way that you've widened the application into all these different you know different product lines as well yeah and the link then was by 2014 we then started to have presence in a lot of stores we'd been through legal and compliance with most of the high street retailers because they're carrying our name in store so they need to check that we are who we say we are product does what it says it does we're going to be around lots of things around that um and then as i say john lewis approaches about bedding they were the first they launched bedding in 2014 it was really successful they then launched baby and nursery bedding 2015 and then people started going into john lewis seeing our name on baby and nursery bedding and thinking wow it's an aspirational retailer it's the thing that's the closest to you you know the baby your children sure and it's certified most precious thing and it's certified next to a baby skin so yeah there's some real big ticks there so you must feel really proud about that you know having started off with your chemistry idea i do i do took you five years to get a sale i mean that's that's an amazing journey i do and i suppose like most business entrepreneurs is you're just doing it it's only when you pause and have moments like this so you think actually that's quite a lot yeah because the entrepreneurs you know like you are always looking for the next thing that's right so i'm gonna ask you that well what do you what do you want to do next or how are you going to take this the next things are some quite chunky stuff that we're working on one is home fresh which is about molding homes so this is a development of what you were just talking about yeah we've done that so that's out now as a product called home fresh and that will be available in retail, DIY retailers.

31:32So is it a spray? It's a little box of spray, yeah. So we've got the cleaner and a protector spray. It'll also be available through Travis Perkins. But we're also talking to the construction. So that's business to consumer? Business to consumer, that's right. So that's different as well, isn't it? It's different, yeah. So it's an actual product. So that's coming soon, is it? That's coming this, it'll be July from next month. Oh, fantastic. Yeah, and Travis Perkins. And it's home fresh. Everyone listening, if you want to get it, it's home fresh, Travis Perkins. That's right. Nail that mould is the message.

32:01None of us like mould. That's right. And we're talking to house builders about incorporating it into the houses. When they do the work. And that will keep it away. That will keep the mould away. And again, we say it's not a guarantee. But is it essentially the same chemistry as the microfresh? It's the same chemistry as microfresh that's safe next to a baby's skin. Going back to my original point of not wanting to have anything nasty and hazardous. That's number one, what's coming next. The other thing that's coming next is the US. So we finally got the Microfresh trademark in the US. It took us six years.

32:35So why did that take so long? Because other people had it for different things. Yeah, the US is quite hard like that. I mean, I can't use the name Reed in the US because someone else has already, but there must be thousands of people who read it. I saw that they're all here. So it seems like a funny - You feel my pain. Yeah, so that was your, so it's interesting, but you persevered, that's what I'm hearing. Persevered. So you got that eventually. We finally got it 18 months ago. So you had to get lawyers to keep putting in requests. Yeah, and we had to knock all the – and it wasn't in our industry.

33:06So there may be a Microfresh putty somewhere in Wisconsin or there may be a Microfresh blinds company or a Microfresh car cleaner. So we had to one by one knock these off. It took six years. So if you want to use your own brand, you have to get permission in all those different locations. That's right. That's a big job. And in the meantime – So are you expanding there now? is that you want absolutely three growth areas are home fresh the us so we've now got you can guys buy socks in the us with micro fresh you can buy towels and you can buy shoes i was thinking shoes yeah shoes yeah but we know in the us their fomo is much bigger than ours so that um comp shopping thing will happen we think much quicker that they'll go around and say what's this micro pressing we need that and the third thing is automotive i'll go on so how does that work There's a UK company that already has micro...

33:55I can't say who, they've not launched yet. UK auto company. And will they put it on the seats? It's in the seats. So it's a micro-freshed interior for the cleanest possible interior. So it will smell good like new. It will smell good and nasty microbes can't grow. And it's just the cleanest possible. But you can't tell us yet who that is. No, because it's not launched yet. So how long have you got to go for that? We're hoping it'll be either this winter or next spring. Oh, quite soon as well. Yeah, yeah. So you've got a lot going on. We've got a lot going on. And then we're hoping that that will then spin off into the US because in the US it's all about aviation.

34:31So we're hoping that they will see that and then say, when they get on planes, why isn't this microfreshed? Microfreshed the verb, which is also coming. So you want people to say microfreshed. That's right. Okay, yeah, no, I like that. So, yeah, why doesn't my plane seat be microfreshed? That's right. I want to say, that's a nice shirt. Is it microfreshed? But that suggests that you can do something to it after it's being purchased rather than part of the production process. It does. So you're going to have it at both ends then. We're not going to have the after treatment for clothing. Not for clothing.

35:00It has to be built in. Okay. To make it permanent almost. So the shirt wouldn't be microfresh if I bought it from the wrong supplier. That's right. But the car seat could be. Yeah. And then with the shirt, you'd have to go into the retail and say, you know, look for ones with microfresh on it. Can you do that now? Not in the UK. In the US you can. But coming soon in the UK? Soon in the UK, yeah. You can tell now, you're picking up on all my body language. So from spring, summer 26, there will be shirts in the UK. And everything we do, we're not allowed to talk about it until it's in the public domain, as you can probably imagine.

35:31Well, because you're doing this with partners, I imagine. That's right, yeah. You're a supplier to other businesses. That's right. Of course, I understand that, yeah. But you've got a lot. So there's a lot of demand. What I'm hearing is there's a lot of demand and there's a lot of potential in this business. Yeah, there is a huge amount of potential. So you're actively growing a UK-based business out of Leicester. That's right. With markets in the US, different markets around the world, different product lines. So how do you approach that? How does you as the CEO, what do you prioritize to make sure all of that happens?

36:02I'm just thinking there's a lot going on. I mean, I'm a CEO as well. I mean, there's a lot going on here. How's Byron going to nail one, two, and three? Because there are three different. There are. And what I've done, James, is I, because I'll chase everything. And I don't mean that in a bad way. What I mean is I am naturally, like, wired. So I want to do, oh, that's a good idea, that's a good idea. So you're always looking for good ideas. And I'll think, that's a good idea. And then I'll be distracted. And that was what, on my school reports, it said easily distracted. So we now have a board, an advisory board, which for me is heaven, because I put everything on the table and they say, you can do that or you can do that.

36:37So they help you with strategy, basically. They help me with, I call it the boring word, strategy, but it's a proper word. It's like the harness on a child. Go, whoa, just a minute. If you're going to do that, you need to have this, this, and this. I think strategy is really difficult because it does involve not doing things, which might look interesting and prioritizing things in an order and you're not sure if you've got it in the right order. Yeah. I think we spend quite a bit of time this time of year on strategy because our financial year ends at the end of June. Same as this, yeah, we're the same.

37:06We're the same. But I always find it tough. I always feel, after really intense strategy meetings, I feel really tired. Yeah, I do. There's a lot of brain power involved somehow. Yeah. I mean, the difference between getting it right and wrong is huge, I suppose. It's huge. And the driver for me is, if I had the board six years ago, I wouldn't have had the trauma of getting the Microfresh US trademark and the cost, which I won't even talk about today. Because when I think about the cost, it's huge. Oh, the lawyers. The lawyers, yeah. So why would that have been different if you'd had the board?