PROFILE
She was a shy child who shunned the limelight. Now, Dragons’ Den star Sara Davies has a multi-million-pound crafting business and is about to launch aTV show for wouldbe inventors. Laura Silverman meets an entrepreneur extraordinaire
Every Monday evening, 14-year-old Sara Davies, then Johnson, would drop in on her neighbours. Sara was renovating a room in their homes. Each week, she would collect a small payment. After a year, she would use the money to buy materials from her parents’ wallpaper and paint shop and hire a decorator. “It was a nice revenue model. What I do now on shopping TV is not overly different,” she laughs.
Sara founded Crafter’s Companion, the multi-million-pound business that has made her name, at university. Today, it sells stamps and stencils, crochet kits and colouring pencils. But it owes its success to a tool Sara invented for making envelopes in her student digs and her ability to sell it on a shopping channel. Within half an hour of demoing it on air, she had persuaded 8,000 people they needed an Enveloper in their life. Crafters not only loved the product, they loved her.
For the next ten years, Sara grew her craft business. Then, in 2019, she became a judge on Dragons’ Den, followed a couple of years later by a whirl on Strictly Come Dancing. Now, she’s back in the Den and is about to start filming her own BBC show, encouraging people to pitch their invention: “I’ll be able to empathise with them because I know what it’s like coming up with an idea.”
PUSHING THE ENVELOPE
Sara’s drive has always been accompanied by empathy, warmth and a desire not to let anyone down – staff, friends, her children, herself. Growing up, she was quiet and unassuming: “I lacked self-confidence. I went through school being in the background of everything.”
She didn’t mind knocking on neighbours’ doors because she was running a business. It was a family trait. Sara’s dad, Frank, ran a small transport company. Her mum, Susan, had the wallpaper shop. They showed Sara the value of hard work while putting family first. The shop had been set up by Frank as a business her mum could run while looking after Sara and her younger sister, Helen: “They were quite traditional. My dad felt like he had to be the provider.” By the time Sara graduated, Crafter’s Companion was making more money than the shop. Sara was determined to make it an even greater success. She had no ambitions to escape to the bright lights of a city as she wanted to stay close to home.
NO PLACE LIKE HOME
We meet today at The Nest, an eco-retreat on farmland, near where Sara lives and grew up in County Durham. It’s on one of her favourite running routes (she can easily run 15k). We’ve squelched across the farmland and are drying off in a wooden lodge, looking out at Hurworth Burn reservoir
