I am Simon Nash, my business is green oil and it makes the worlds greenest range of bicycle lubricant and bicycle maintenance products. The key values are British manufacturing, performance, and environmental sustainability.
The first product was a bicycle lubricant and there weren’t any other biodegradable lubricants on the market, so Green Oil was the first in the UK and is plant based and biodegradable and it doesn’t use petro chemicals and PTFE.
I got interested in bike products when I was cycling through a river and felt bad about my chain oil going in the water, so that gave me the motivation to create Green Oil and so I did, and yeah it’s nice being in the bike industry. I’ve been running for just over 6 years now, so I should be a millionaire by now, but I’m not yet.
In 5 years, I see Green Oil with more different bike products and more non-bike products. I’d also like to see it selling in about 32 different countries and for more people be employed so I won’t have to do as much as I do now, and I’ll be able to just kind of invent new products whilst every other task in the business will be done.
What are some of the struggles you’ve faced?
Well, everything. The branding was wrong initially, so finding a graphic design company which could do a good job, finding a factory to make the products, getting a bank loan, finance, up-scaling production, finding a distributor, getting ripped off by landlords, landlords not fixing stuff… To be honest, everything’s been a struggle really, but it is quite enjoyable when it’s not.
What is the best thing about starting Green Oil?
The freedom, the ability to be creative, and probably the people that you meet as well, and in the future you’ll earn more than you could do in a job.
There have also been some really good product reviews in magazines, so that’s quite nice, my company was featured on the BBC and it’s quite nice being famous for the day! And I’ve sold, like 90,000 units or more so that means there’s lots of petro chemicals being replaced in the market by green products so that’s really good. You’re also always free to start up other companies and come up with new ideas and new products whenever I like so, that’s quite a nice thing.
If you could have any enterprise related super power what would it be?
Probably to persuade or convince anyone of anything, then I could persuade anyone to buy my products. Mind manipulation, that’s what marketing people try to achieve so, it’d be good to have some of that.