JML - The home-based product retailer that was part of shopping channel boom celebrates 25 years

A BUSINESSMAN who set up a firm in his Camden Town home’s basement and went on to sell 20 million ironing board covers is celebrating 25 years of his company.

Former Labour councillor John Mills, who set up JML in the 1980s, has seen his home-based product retailer go from a small firm selling kitchen goods and cleaning products to a company that has employed thousands of people and a global trade. Based at a purpose-built office in Regis Road, Kentish Town – built in 1997 on the proceeds of selling millions of ironing board covers – it is seen as one of the first firms to use TV shopping channels to showcase its labour-saving inventions and wares.

And Mr Mills’s firm has sold some of the most recognisable household labour-saving devices around. He said: “We are still selling these ironing board covers – and they are an amazing product.

“It seems improbable to build a business on this but they just sold unbelievably well.”

In the 1980s he was involved in manufacturing the type of items he now sells, but found with the recession, the strong pound and high interest rates it often cost more to simply buy the raw materials for making things than it wold have done to buy the finished product from abroad. 

“We were in the business of manufacturing but it got to the point where the costs were just astronomical to make anything so I decided to switch to trading,” said Mr Mills.

Then came the advent of video promotions. In the past, he has sent skilled sales teams to trade fairs and demonstrate his goods. But this had drawbacks, including a high turnover of staff, so one day he came up with the idea that would change his firm’s fortunes for the better – and kickstart something which is ubiquitous in British trade. “It was the boom in video technology,” he recalls.

This meant you could film one person demonstrating how to use one of the JML product range, put it in a store and away you go. Then, a north-east firm asked if they could use it on Tyne Tees television one Christmas, to help boost sales. The product, a pen set, was in such demand that queues formed outside shops for them and the television sales channels were born.

But no matter how you sell them, if the products aren’t what people want, they simply will stay on the shelves. Mr Mills added: “We develop over 100 products a year, and the key thing is we sales test them in 10 sites for around six weeks.”

Published: 14 July 2011
by DAN CARRIER

Pictured: JML chairman John Mills, right, with the company’s group managing director Ken Daly and finance director Sanna Wei