Meet our blooper rolls!
At Naked Sprout, we’re all about sustainability, transparency, and delivering the very best for our customers.
But the best laid plans can throw up some surprises. Even with the papermaking masters at our factory, the most sophisticated and sustainable processes we can muster, and a meticulous eye for detail, the production process occasionally throws us a curveball.
In the spirit of transparency and good humour, we thought it would be fun to share some of the more memorable production mishaps we’ve encountered while making our environmentally friendly tissue products. Nobody’s perfect after all, and little imperfections can lead to interesting stories.
So grab a chipped mug of tea and a couple of broken biscuits and join us for a few of our blooper rolls!
Blooper one: The short rolls
Imagine this: You’re getting ready to pull a fresh loo roll from the box, expecting the usual Naked Sprout size and shape and chic brown colour. But as you reach in, you’re greeted by something… unexpected.
Among the regimented rows of standard sized rolls there’s one that’s shorter and stubbier than the others. It’s soft, it’s sustainable, but it’s smaller than you were expecting. You’ve encountered one of our rare short rolls; where did the little interloper come from?
During the production process, our tissue begins as large parent rolls—huge spools of toilet roll ready to be cut down to size. They’re made a little longer than needed because the ends tend to be loose and uneven. These ends are chopped off, and the offcuts go back into the mix for our recycled rolls.
Apart from when they don’t. Every once in a while a customer will report finding a strange short roll in their order. One of our offcuts has got loose!
Nerdier members of the team refer to these as our hobbit rolls; intrepid little chaps that, perhaps filled with a sense of adventure, find their way into boxes despite our best efforts to keep them out.
If you find one you’re lucky! Send us a picture of your short roll, and we’ll send you free tissue goodies.
Blooper two: The rough cut rogues
Just because we’ve decided against wrapping our rolls, doesn’t mean we don’t take pride in their appearance. Our unbleached, sandy coloured products are on show in houses and workplaces up and down the country, and we know the little things - like a perfectly even edge - make them look neat and orderly.
But sometimes those edges don’t come out quite as smooth as we’d like. You’ve met the short rolls, now it’s time for their roguish cousins, the rough-cut rolls! Soft, strong, normal sized rolls but the edges look rough and dented. What’s gone wrong here?
The answer lies in the unique way we power our factory. We talk a lot about the local renewable energy that we use to make Naked Sprout and the solar panels, wind turbines, and even sheep droppings that make it all possible.
The sources of energy we use are resilient and reliable, but occasionally there will be a brief drop or a surge in the supply, and this can have an unforeseen knock-on in one key part of our operations - the counter on our circular saws.
We mentioned above that our parent rolls are chopped down to make smaller rolls. This chopping is done by circular saw - here's the process in action!
The circular saw comes equipped with a counter that shows how many times it has been used, so the blades can be sharpened at regular intervals.
But power blips, even ones that are too short to notice, reset the counter. This means a saw that doesn’t get changed on time, and rolls that come out looking a little worse for wear.
Like the hobbit rolls, these are normally spotted and removed to be recycled. But occasionally we’ll find a box of rough-cut rolls has slipped through quality control and gone out for delivery.
We know our customers are already taking a bit of a leap with the whole brown toilet roll thing, the last thing we want is scruffy edges bringing down the vibe of the bathroom. So let us know if you get any of these dastardly rogues, and we’ll sort it!
Blooper three: the tissue typo
Finally, let’s talk about a blooper that’s happened away from our production line, on the packaging itself.
You know that proud statement on our tissue boxes that reads “Britain’s most sustainable”? It’s a claim we take very seriously, with the evidence of our green credentials painstakingly collected, documented, and published on our website.
But somewhere along the way our tissue boxes went a bit off-script.
When we came to design our packaging an extra letter “i” snuck in, and our tissue boxes ended up being printed with the line “Britiain’s most sustainable” instead.
It’s amazing how one little typo can change everything. Instead of proclaiming our pride in our environmental credentials, we inadvertently created a whole new (and entirely fictional) place: Britiain.
This particular blooper left us with a mix of amusement and embarrassment. Particularly because, by the time we’d noticed it, we’d already made enough tissue boxes to cover thousands of orders.
But mistakes happen, and this one has given a fair few customers a chuckle, so we’ll take the L here. It’s a good reminder that no matter how hard we strive for perfection, there’s always room for a little human error!
Rolling with the punches
We reckon our blooper rolls are a great reminder that being a responsible business isn’t just about producing perfect products—it’s about being honest, adaptable, and willing to learn from every experience. We’re proud of the high standards we’ve set for ourselves, but we’re also happy to admit things don’t always go as planned, and respond accordingly.
And really, these little bloopers are part of what makes us, well, us. They show that Naked Sprout isn’t just a faceless company churning out products; we’re a team of people doing our best to supply our wonderful, good-humoured customers with everyday essentials they can be proud of, even when our best includes the odd mistake.
So the next time you open a box of Naked Sprout and find a roll that’s a little short or a little rough, we hope you’ll a) smile and b) let us know! We’ll put it right.
As for facial tissues from the mysterious land of “Britiain,” we’re hoping to have got through the misprinted boxes by 2025. We’ll be triple checking the next design.
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