Oldham Evening Chronicle

An Oldham company has won a Queen’s Award for outstanding innovation…and four Oldham representatives of a Bolton-based travel business are basking in the glory of the same accolade.
Trendsetter Home Furnishings Ltd has produced a duvet that can be washed in domestic machines, while Travel Counsellors Ltd has established a groundbreaking holidays-from-home concept and achieved growth in an increasingly beleaguered industry.
Temperature
Marketed under the Fine Bedding Company brand, Spundown, developed at the Trendsetter’s headquarters in Hollins Road, Oldham, is based upon an extremely compressible micro-fibre filling and a cover material which is lightweight, fast-drying and does not allow the micro-fibres to escape.
The duvets can be washed at a temperature that kills the dust mites which cause asthma… and they have already proved a commercial success.
The Find Bedding Company is a trading style of Trendsetter Home Furnishings, a private limited company established in 1975 by Paul Black and based in Oldham.
The company, which now has 155 employees, is a leading duvet and pillow manufacturer and offers a comprehensive range of natural and synthetic-filled products.
“We are very honoured our Spundown product has been recognised with this prestigious award,” said managing-director Clare Briegal.
Allergy
She added: “For a small company, we put a great deal of resource behind research and development to understand and create innovative filled products that are practical, of extremely high quality, yet affordable.”
She explained that the product was developed because the number of asthma and allergy sufferers in the UK has increased considerably over the past 50 years.
It is estimated that 5.1 million people in the UK are currently being treated for asthma. Many are children. One of the most common causes of asthma and allergies is the house dust mite, which produce enzymes that affect the lining of the lungs, nasal passage and eyes. After four years of research and testing, a chemical treatment was developed that successfully eliminated the dust mites.
It was discovered that the waste from processing this product was harmful to the environment and, as a result, banned by some high street retailers.
Cambridge University researchers made an interesting discovery that dust mites could be killed by washing at 60 degrees Celsius.
Although many products on the market are washable at 60 degrees, they will only fit into large capacity washing machines and often do not wash well.
Research showed that washing a duvet at home was not only of interest to allergy sufferers but to the general consumer.
The Spundown duvet was developed by using the technology behind ski jackets and gloves.
Trendsetter developed a fibre blend that achieved the necessary thermal properties and loft for the duvet, yet is compressible enough to fit into a domestic washing machine.
The outside cover also had to prevent the filling from roping and percolating during the wash.
Trendsetter’s micro-fibre duvets have led to a substantial improvement to the business and have accounted for a major increase in sales of their synthetic duvets.
The company has also worked closely with major high-street retailers to develop their own label, micro-fibre duvets, sold with differing specifications and propositions.
Spundown has recently gained independent approval from the Good House Keeping Institute.

Travel Counsellors Ltd is a personalised consultancy service which allows customers to book holidays and receive independent travel advice from home via personal travel advisers.
Heather Rigby and Lisa Murray, from Shaw, Julie Holden, from Oldham, and Joanne Bowman, form Royton, represent the company locally.
Contacts
A customer profile is created from each new inquiry and sales leads are generated by each travel consultant using their own personal contacts and networks.
They build a business by the process of referral and supported by Teletext advertising.
Using a unique Freephone telephone number for each destination advertised on Teletext, the system permits a sophisticated call-management system to route caller automatically to advisers specialising in the caller’s area of interest.
The business employs 73 people at the head office in Churchgate, Bolton.
Managing director David Speakman told Chronicle Business: “This is a people business. We deliver expertise in a more, innovative, dynamic and customer friendly way – a combination of talent and technology that has been recognised by the Queen.”
The Queen’s Award recognises an “outstanding innovation which results in substantial improvement in business performance and commercial success, sustained over two years.” Eleven North-West companies have been rewarded in this year’s Queen’s Awards for Enterprise categories are International Trade, Innovation and Sustainable Development.

Queen’s Award winners are entitled to fly an award flag and display the emblem on their letter headings, in advertising, on the packaging of goods, on the goods themselves and on items which may be presented to employees.

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