About Us
CL Leavey & Co is actually a pair of businesses, shoe-horned into a rather dingy former chicken house in one of the windiest mud-swamps of rural Worcestershire. www.claireleavey.com is our retail arm, sending all the products offered on this site all over the world by mail-order. CL Leavey & Co is the very straight-faced manufacturing and trading arm, under whose aegis we manufacture the 'Biobar', 'Apis', 'The Still' and 'Salt of the Sea' lines in-house.
Everything we offer is 'GENUINE GOOD STUFF' – just as it says on the tin! Our hardware is proper, authentic, useful gear, all selected with a keen eye on price as much as aesthetics, ecocredentials and utility. William Morris could have drafted our mission statement.
All our in-house lines are made from 100% natural materials, using recipes and techniques that in some cases can be traced right back to the Romans. Claire has spent 25 years researching historic herb and bee products, and how they might be combined to produce the most amazing products for every imaginable application.
In making our 'The Still' skin lotions, salves and creams, we use food-grade hygiene routines and equipment – and because we use no artificial preservatives, we routinely sterilise all equipment at several points during manufacture using nothing less than pure methyl alcohol. An expensive and time-consuming option – but never too much trouble in our service of you, our beloved customer.
All our 'Apis' polishes are made using only pure gum turpentine and British beeswax – in fact, to our knowledge, no other volume manufacturer can even pretend to make such a claim. When you buy our polishes, you're buying an authentic traditional product of the very highest quality – and when you use them, your furniture, classic vehicles, fine leather and architectural timber will shine as never before.
All our 'Salt of the Sea' products are based on nothing but the very purest kosher Dead Sea salt, with the addition of amazing materials like Epsom salts, essential oils and honey to give you the most incredibly luxurious deep-cleansing experience.
The only animal products we use are 'delivered' by the animals: so goat's milk is in our Nanny's Fudge soap, and honey is in our Honey Lips lip-balm. Most products are vegetarian, and many are vegan.
Most of our bee products come from local beekeepers – we work hard to support them, because they need all the help they can get.
The palm oil in our soaps comes from Columbia, where plantations are properly managed and no orang-utans are put at risk.
Our staffing policies are strictly ethical – in fact, we're so ethical we have no staff. Rather we have a team of self-employed skilled casuals, who come in to help as required, with hours that fit in with their other responsibilities/leisure interests – and who don't work at all if they don't feel like it. Now that's a Twenty-First Century kind of deal …
As part of Oxfam's supplier approval process, by the way, we had all our buying and employment policies ethically audited – and came through with flying colours! We're so proud to work with Oxfam, and we hope you'll get your Biobars from your local branch from now on …
