Zamo pine disinfectant. One of the truly great British, nay London brands. A beautiful clear amber coloured liquid disinfectant. You can use it neat or dilute it for cleaning larger areas. Traditional disinfectants turn the water in your mop bucket cloudy - an opaque white. Its strong, pine smell reminds you of school lavs. This then, will either be a very comforting smell or frankly, horrifying.
Zamo’s excellent strap line is ‘non-poisonous’ (a handy trait in something you keep under the kitchen sink). The back of the beautiful label (which you can see through the back of the bottle) helpfully suggests dilution rates including “spraying nurseries and sickrooms”. The label also states the amounts for sterlising “bath linen”.
I would like to shake the hand of whoever ‘designed’ the Zamo label. It’s so handsome with its pine trees and red, slab serif/Western style font. Not that whoever they were would have overthought it in such a pretentious way…They probably just put it together. Like all the best designs.
The bottle itself is excellent too. That's not an off the shelf number, no, I bet way back whenever, they had that shape custom made.
Zamo is such an excellent product and brand. We couldn’t figure out why there wasn’t any merch. (T shirts and tea towels, that sort of thing). But we’d never do something like that without asking permission first, obviously.
So I tried to get in touch with Zamo.
Yeah, best of luck with that.
It took a few weeks to raise anyone there. (Sadly, I have found that the few UK manufacturers left seem to be missing a trick in terms of STAYING IN BUSINESS. Because they WON’T ANSWER THE PHONE.
OR REPLY TO EMAILS. Again another story.
(I can’t wait to tell you actually: We use another UK factory that is run so badly, is so disorganised and infuriating that its terrible website says on the front page “we are having problems with our phone”. Brilliant. When they eventually go out of business, I will say SHOULDDA ANSWERED THE PHONE.)
But I finally I found the top banana at the Zamo factory: Terry.
Terry is an enigma – when I asked him if I could visit the Zamo factory he elaborately answered “No”.
I gathered that there were a team of six there. I pictured a big vat of Zamo bubbling away, kind of like some micro brewery crossed with Breaking Bad. A forklift truck or two. A kettle and the radio on.
He eventually let me have an email address for him. (I thought I must be the only person in the world who had such valuable information). So I wrote my proposal to Terry, gushing away about the beloved Zamo and sent him some prototype T shirts for him and his staff. And some tea towels. He was marvellously polite, but turns out, could not have given less of a f*ck.
I chased up the samples, got him once on the phone:
ME: “What do you think Terry? Do you like them? Can we print some and sort out paying you some kind of royalty or cut?”
TERRY: “See how you get on, love.”
Followed it up again, feeling the above didn’t constitute much of an agreement, much less a binding contract. “Can I have something in writing Terry, so I know you’re ok with me printing your logo?”
TERRY’S EMAIL:
Good afternoon Martha,
Further to our telephone conversation this morning, I am in agreement for you to use the trademark and we will talk about royalties once you have recouped the costs for some of the stock.
Kind Regards,Terry
Translates as “You poor deluded fool. It would be like taking candy from a baby. Royalties? I’m not the bleedin’ Beatles.” He’s right actually. Probably owe Terry about 20p by now.
Off we went, printing away, tea towels and t shirts a go-go.
But it never got any easier to get hold of the ACTUAL ZAMO: As a retailer, the only way you can get your mitts on a supply of Zamo, is to use a wholesaler (that’s a whole other story – bit like the Freemasons if you ask me… Very cloak-and-dagger). So I lay awake at night wondering how the wholesalers manage to get Terry at Zamo to answer the phone. But they must do. Because they have Zamo.
BUT NO MORE.
The very sad news is that Terry is hanging up his hat. This means that we’ve panic bought all the Zamo we could find. All of it. By the time we get to the last few bottles, I’ll be charging you whatever I feel like.
I never got to see the set up. And now I’ll never know.
If you Google-earthed the factory address, it certainly looks like Zamo was sitting on a very valuable bit of real estate.
I do hope Terry’s ok, having a nice sit down and a cup of tea. Would have loved to have seen that factory.
@janefrancesdeans suggested our new Zamo strap line:
ZAMO – WE CRY TEARS OF PINE
