Early beginnings
A small local company who's main business was installing water softeners into people's homes was asked to assist a large scale NHS funded study into the effects of softened water on children with a specific type of eczema.
It had previously been established that eczema in children was more prevalent in areas of the UK that have naturally occurring hard water, so the study was to explore the hypothesis that introducing softened water into the homes of these children may reverse this distressing condition or at least provide some welcome relief from the symptoms.
Families with eczema
The role of the business was to carry out the installation work in a total of 315 homes of the trial participants, then to conduct visits on behalf of the university conducting the trial to monitor the performance of the softeners and switch them from working to non-working after a pre-determined period so that the severity of the eczema could be monitored by a team of specialist nurses.
After meeting and talking to the families and seeing how much benefit the softened water had on the severity of eczema in the majority of the children, making the visits to switch them off, knowing that in all likelihood the child's eczema would return to it's previous state, was something the water softener engineers found especially difficult.
Lack of choice
It was during conversations with these families that common threads started to emerge about the effects of commercial laundry products on sensitive skin, especially the mainstream brands available at the time.
A further realisation emerged that up to a third of the ingredients by volume of many supermarket laundry products were included in the formulation simply to try to mitigate the effects of hardness minerals in mains water.
Market trends
In separate developments, it was noticed that the market for eco-friendly, biodegradable laundry products was growing strongly as people, especially water softener owners, sought to cut waste and reduce their environmental footprint.
Questions would often be asked about the suitability of these new products for use with softened water, and also wider questions about cleaning products in the home including the most suitable products to choose for customers with private drainage systems.
These are sensitive to strong bleaches and chemicals that disrupt the actions of bacteria which are necessary to safely break down waste before discharge into the environment.
The birth of Softly
Bringing these threads together, it was clear there was no single laundry detergent that was specifically designed for use with softened water, that was gentle and safe for sensitive skin and was made from natural ingredients that would break down quickly and harmlessly after use and without upsetting private drainage systems in the process.
And so we embarked upon an ambitious plan to create something that would meet all these criteria and make it available and affordable to everyone who needed it.
