From cordless cleaners to Premier League dreams: The unlikely story behind football’s smartest partnership
It’s the height of the Premier League season, and nobody is enjoying 2025 football more than Nick Grey, the charismatic inventor and CEO of the British-based firm, Gtech.
In 2022, the man who single-handedly revolutionised cordless cleaning turned his attention to something entirely different: the rising stars of English football, Brentford FC.
Three years on, and with the Brentford Bees now firmly placed in the Premier League tables and Jordan Henderson captaining England, Brentford FC and the Gtech Community Stadium are truly the perfect match.
It’s clear that football has a special place in Grey’s heart, and his pride in the partnership is palpable. The Gtech Community Stadium is emblazoned with the company’s name, flashes up in national broadcasts, and echoes through the stands in the chants of Brentford fans.
Both Brentford and Gtech appear to have a similar mindset: meticulous planning and rock-solid preparation.
‘Obviously, there are some differences between football and selling vacuum cleaners,’ laughs Grey. ‘But there are clear similarities.’
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Gtech CEO Nick Grey says there are ‘clear similarities’ between his business and football
To him, the parallels between the beautiful game and global business are obvious: innovation, teamwork, relentless testing, and a hunger to succeed.
The inventor points out that the final product or game is only a small part of the story; what you don’t see is equally important.
‘Behind the scenes at the training ground is very exciting,’ says Grey. ‘We get to hear the club’s vision and strategy,’
Here, he describes the atmosphere as being very cheerful and down-to-earth. ‘The players aren’t inaccessible superstars. However tired they are after training, they’ll sit down and have dinner and a chat. These men are intelligent, they’re incredible athletes, and they know they’re part of an extraordinary success story.’
Brentford FC might not pack the spending power of Premier League giants. But that, he says, is what makes their achievements even more phenomenal.
‘It’s an incredibly competitive league, where there are millions of pounds flowing from clubs with massive budgets and buying the best players in the world.’
Then, he says with a grin, there’s Brentford.
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Revolutionary: The AirRam 3 Plus Dual Edge-Clean Cordless Vacuum, with Voice Assist
‘They’re operating on a tiny budget and are constantly having their players picked off by bigger clubs. Yet here they are again doing incredibly well. They always have a plan, and they recruit players who have the potential to be trained for their way of playing.’
Their superb pitch skills and goal-scoring are, explains Nick, down to foresight, smart hiring and a razor-sharp training strategy.
He is thrilled about Jordan Henderson’s success. ‘It’s such an honour! The guy playing at the Gtech stadium is also the England captain!’
Gtech is, in some ways, the Brentford FC of the domestic product world, being eternally innovative and with an ethos based around talent and teamwork rather than hierarchy and corporate convention.
Based just outside Worcester in a smart, sleek hub, Gtech’s phenomenally efficient time and energy-saving products are the culmination of years of prototypes and testing. Within the hub are rooms devoted to design, where Grey can describe his ideas and have them made a reality by his product creators.
Since launching in a garage in 2001, where Grey famously made the world’s first cordless sweeper – the SW01, his vision has expanded.
In 2012 he effectively reinvented the vacuum cleaner in the form of the AirRAM, shifting the filter to the base of the machine for unprecedented efficiency.
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When Grey saw his mother struggling with a heavy vacuum cleaner he invented the AirRam
It’s no exaggeration to say that Gtech has revolutionised the cordless domestic and garden market.
That said, he points out, where there’s some certainty in the production of a product, there are no such guarantees in football.
‘However well organised your 11 players are, there’s 11 players on the other team who are also extremely skilled and trying to stop you. So you can’t win every game, and you can’t achieve every target.’
But, in the same way that Gtech has changed global cleaning for the better, he says that Brentford has changed football. ‘Brentford looked at ways of creating scoring opportunities in a vast arena of very skilful defenders.’
‘We’re all perfectionists in a very imperfect world,’ he adds. ‘Cleaning up dirt, beating rival teams…It’s a challenging environment, where you’re constantly trying to improve.’
His favourite Brentford memory remains the club’s first match at the then freshly-named Gtech Stadium, a Premier League clash against the mighty Manchester United. ‘And we slaughtered them! It was four nil. That’s pretty hard to beat.’
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Passion project: The Gtech Community Stadium is a landmark for passing motorists on the M4
He says he can be similarly moved by quieter moments. ‘Sometimes I get a bit of a tear in my eye during Match of the Day. It’s the bastion of sports coverage, and when they say we’re off to the Gtech stadium, there’s a drone shot of the stadium with Gtech on the roof. Even three years on, it’s surreal.’
‘My little company that I started in my garage is now featured on major football coverage. The world’s greatest teams, like Liverpool and Manchester United are playing there, and being beaten there, and Gtech is a part of that.’
Teamwork, preparation, and a touch of genius, all combining to produce phenomenal results. It’s no wonder that Gtech and Brentford FC work so brilliantly together.
