By Ronnie – MD Wormcity Ltd
I first started vermicomposting way back in 2005, I always had an interest in nature and all things wriggly so instead of going back to work after my daughter was born in 2004, I decided to start up a business selling other companies wormeries via the internet, This meant I could work my own hours and be a full time mum.
Eventually I decided to stop selling other peoples wormeries, and started making our own and created ‘Wormcity’
The first real big break was when Toby Buckland trialled out our budget ‘EcoWormery and featured it in Kitchen Garden magazine.
As the business grew my husband Geoff joined me, and we became Wormcity Ltd.
In the Autumn 2008 we started looking to promote a stacking wormery as a new line, but we couldn’t find anything remotly suitable that was made in England.
We decided that we didn’t want to import our products from abroad, as we were supposed to be promoting an environmentally friendly product, difficult when the plastic had come from the other side of the world.
So armed with a few ideas and lots of enthusiasm, we set up some meetings with local companies to see how much it would cost to get a product made here in the UK.
The price was very scary.
Fortunatly, we found a fabulous company who shared our passion and wanted to help us……
Then the real work began.
Fourteen months after we signed the agreement, endless meetings, design changes, trials, tears and tantrums the Wormcity Wormery was finally created, just in time for Christmas 2010 and for a review in Amateur Gardening Magazine …….
Which gave us the highest rating of all the plastic wormeries trialled.
Wormcity continues to be a family run business, whose primary focus is to help people understand, how easy and fun it is to compost with worms.
The Wormcity Timeline
- 2005 February – Wormcity was founded .
We’ve always had a passion for the environment and all things internet it seemed the perfect solution to start selling wormeries via the internet, and so Wormcity was born. - 2005 we started building the website – building it totally from scratch ensuring that it was easy to navigate and user friendly, with as much information on it as possible.
Originally we were selling competitors wormeries and quickly discovered the many flaws that the leading wormeries had.
Dustbin wormeries never had enough air flow, and were very difficult to manage, stacking wormeries kept toppling over as their legs fell off.
- 2006 we decided to create our own wormeries better designed and affordable – and so the Ecowormery and Executive wormery were launched, Design rights were granted from the intellectual property office. Wormcity wormeries soon became very popular as the wormeries were priced competitively (and still are) with no hidden costs and lots of helpful advice available on the website and Forum.
- 2007 May wormcity was incorporated into Wormcity Ltd.
- 2007 December Wormcity was featured in Kitchen Garden magazine. Toby Buckland was trialling the Ecowormery with fantastic results.
- 2008 saw the introduction of the sister site to wormcity, selling Bokashi Buckets and bran.
- 2008 also saw Wormcity become a registered trademark and the securing of our first council contract
- 2009 has been an interesting year for us, as this year we lauched the Wormcity Wormery
Its taken 10 months to design, create and manufacture this wormery. Made entirely in Hampshire England it looks great, is easy to put together and is large enough for a family.
- 2009 Wormcity got into the final ‘top 10 best business website’ in Hampshire
- 2010 Our website has had an overhaul, we started blogging, tweeting and started our facebook group.
- 2010 June The wormcity wormery went back to the toolmakers to improve the composting trays.
Ribs were added to the outside, and at the bottom of each tray, to increase strength and durability. Also the lugs on the lids were made stronger.
The Wormcity wormery continues to get excellent reviews, as does our company, due to our knowledge and professionalism when dealing with our customers