Grocer Gold Awards 2022: startup of the year

Winner: Homethings

It’s not often a startup in the Dragons’ Den pressure cooker has all five dragons practically begging to invest. But Homethings founders Tim Keaveney and Matthew Aubrey did just that last year, scoring backing from both Deborah Meaden and Peter Jones.

Since first launching its three refillable cleaning spray tabs in 2020, Homethings has made great strides in its mission to reduce the amount of waste water and single-use plastics in the household category.

In the past year, Homethings served more than 26,000 customers, saved 23 tonnes of single-use plastic from landfill, launched five new products, and went omnichannel as it expanded its DTC subscription model into retail with a first supermarket listing at Waitrose.

The judges praised the brand’s innovative product range, which went “above and beyond” just refilling plastic bottles. Innovation has continued to flourish this year as Homethings launched what it claimed to be the world’s first powder to gel washing-up liquid, made of only natural ingredients.

The carbon neutral business attracted more than 400 new investors to its heavily oversubscribed crowdfunding round to smash a target of £600,000 and ultimately bring in almost £1m of new capital to extend the product range further, grow the sales channels and hire more key staff. It also boosted its ethical cred by attaining B Corp status.

Shortlisted:

• Caleño Drinks
• Neat
• Norlo
• Nutri-Genetix
• Zeus Labs