Branche d'Olive

But during a trip to a flea market in Provence, they came across some beautiful, hand-crafted Marseilles soap and added a few bars to their haul for decorative effect.

Customers loved it and soon the soap was outselling the furniture and the pair ended up hand-wrapping hundreds of bars of it at their kitchen tables.

Fast forward to present day and Jane, 60, and Ruthie, 59, employ five people and supply 350 hotels, restaurants and retailers, including Liberty, Fortnum & Mason, Le Manoir aux Quat’Saisons, Burford Garden Centre and Blenheim Palace.

The range has also expanded to include shampoo, bath lotions, soap dishes, hand towels, candles and home fragrances, known as ‘diffusers’ and the list of fragrances includes rose, lemon and lavender, as well as the signature olive.

And their products are even being exported to spas and hotels in Greece, the US, Australia and Far East.

The pair met through their children, who were at school together and are now in their thirties, and were both stay-at-home mums.

Jane’s love of auctions led her to take a place in an antiques market in Wantage to sell French furniture.

She explained: “I used to get into an empty car and then tootle around the markets of Provence, finding lovely things and come back with the car stuffed to the gills.”

Later on, Ruthie, whose past career included working for auctioneer house Sotheby’s, had joined her at the market and they had found the ‘fabricator’, the Frenchman who made the soap.

It turned out, he was looking for a distributor in the UK and they decided to take the plunge.

Jane added: “We rang him from Ruthie’s kitchen table and he said the minimum order was 2,500 bars. So I told my husband I was selling all my furniture to buy 2,500 bars of soap and he said ‘Of course you are’.”

They took a stand at a leading gift fair in London and displayed the soap in 14 colours, creating an eye-catching display.

It attracted a lot of attention and they took 12 orders.

“Actually, we did not know what the hell we were doing,” Jane admitted. “But people ordered and paid up very quickly so we began to realise we were really on to something.

“Our kids were still teenagers at the time, so we used to bribe them with the offer of paying off their mobile phone bills if they would help us wrap soap in the evenings.”

Next, they teamed up with Steventon-based print finisher and packer Graham Stook, who took on the job of wrapping in properly designed and printed packaging and by this time, every bar was imprinted with the firm’s logo, an olive branch.

As their business grew more successful, they took up more and more of his shelf space and when he retired they took over his staff and equipment — heavy racking, pump trucks and even the kettle and hoover.

That marked them moving into their own rented business unit, Elms Farm on the outskirts of Wantage.

Jane and Ruth have built the business using nothing but cashflow, without taking out loans.

Very early on they were what Jane describes as ‘adopted’ by Raymond Blanc. They took ten of their soaps along to Le Manoir — Monsieur Blanc loved it and began to stock it in the hotel.

All the product is still packed and bottled here in the UK and they have plans to move into bigger premises and take on more staff in the near future.

This includes taking on agents in the north of the country to expand the company’s reach.

They have also recently launched an eau de toilette for men and will add exfoliating soap and shower gel to the range.

Jane explained: “We both love the developmental side of the business and it has been enormous fun.

“The people we meet are generally entrepreneurs like us, like-minded and very energetic.

“We have come through an historic recession and really feel we can go anywhere from here.”