‘People want to be green’: the rise of Devon eco-bedmaker Naturalmat
“W e’re control freaks,” admits Mark Tremlett. “We buy direct from the sources so that we have more control. We buy our wool from local farmers, we know where the timber that we make our beds comes from. We sell from our own shops; we try to control every single aspect of the process.”
It’s a control freakery that has paid off handsomely for the company Tremlett runs with his business partner Peter Tindall. Having started off as a teeny cottage company making mattresses for boats, Naturalmat is now the first B Corp certified bed and mattress company in the UK with five showrooms around the country.
A Naturalmat showroom in London
Tremlett had been working as a chocolate taster for Thorntons, but got fed up with that. “I grew up in a marine world. My father was a yacht designer, and I just couldn’t understand why you’d spend £500,000 on a boat and then have a crap mattress. So I started to look into how you’d make a good mattress for a boat – and the more I looked into it, the clearer it seemed to me that using all-natural fibres was the only way, really.”
Naturalmat worker Sharron Hayes at a sewing machine
Bailey Cochrane at work
Wrapping the core and applying the final Naturalmat label before the finished mattress is packed up
He and Tindall had no furniture experience whatsoever, but it was clear to them that although natural fibres were more expensive and harder to cut, they had many advantages over synthetic fibres. “The fundamental difference is that natural fibre is self ventilating. It wicks away heat and moisture. You lose up a litre of water per person per night. Meanwhile synthetics absorb heat and absorb moisture, so retaining all those elements next to your body.”
But in 1999 this was a pretty unusual approach. “We
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