Dundee based housewares company Aydya Group has been awarded the highly prestigious Queen’s Awards for Enterprise. The company currently exports Any Sharp knife sharpeners and Ion8 eco-friendly water bottles to more than 50 countries worldwide.
Queen’s Awards for Enterprise are presented to UK businesses in recognition of outstanding achievement in the categories of innovation, sustainable development and promoting opportunity through social mobility, as well as international trade.
The Award comes Aydya Group embarks on ambitious expansion plans to grow its business by 60% in new markets, including the USA, and build its brands in the UK and across Europe. Exports already account for around 30% of Aydya’s turnover, with half its international sales coming from the EU. The family-owned business has grown ten-fold in the last four years.
“We are honoured to receive The Queen’s Award for Enterprise, which recognises the global reach of business, with exports to dozens of countries around the world,” states Aydya founder Yusuf Okhai, who acknowledges that the Award is testament to his team’s commitment to creating simple solutions to everyday problems.
He continued: “Aydya wholly owns and operates brands that are sold globally, and we have customers in the USA, Canada, South America, Australia, Asia, the Middle East and Europe, but we are also extremely proud to be based in Dundee.”
Looking back at business growth, Yusuf reflected: “When we started Aydya in 2008, we wanted to create a new brand and came up with Any Sharp. There were bigger brands out there, but we wanted to sell a lesser-known brand at a higher price, but ultimately superior functionality. It has been a top seller on Amazon for 13 years and is a Hall of Fame product.
Ion8 was launched in 2016 “with the aim of fixing design flaws in other products and we’ve created one-touch, 100% leak-proof water bottles.”
Aydya Group donates around 10% of its annual profits to charity through the company’s own charitable organisation, the Medea Charitable Trust, with over £600,000 donated since 2009. The company has also designed one of its Ion8 bottles in collaboration with Friends of the Earth to raise awareness of the charity as well as wider environmental issues.
Top: “We pride ourselves on selling products of the highest quality and value, which are both brilliantly simple and simply brilliant – they look fantastic and work amazingly well,” says Aydya Group’s founder Yusuf Okhai, pictured holding Ion8 bottles.
