I recently attended a talk from Sara Davies and got to meet her afterwards. For those of you that don’t know her, she’s the younger female dragon from Dragons Den and also was part of “Strictly Come Dancing” in 2021.
Before this talk, all I knew about her was that she was a Dragon and had some business success in arts and crafts, but that was about it.
Sara was born in a family of hard workers “grafters”, her dad ran a truck haulage business and her mum ran the local painting and decorating shop. Sara had grown up seeing how hard her parents worked to put food on the table. She decided at an early age, that one day she was going to run her own business.
Sara went to study business at the University of York, this was a sandwich course, where she would spend the third year working for a company to gain experience. Whilst all her friends went of to work for big companies in London, Sara did her placement at a small crafting shop. This shop was struggling to survive and had £30,000 worth of debt to pay off.
Sara, aged 19 at the time asked the owner, “if you are struggling to pay the bills, why did you choose to hire me?”
The owner replied, “well, I thought you could fix it!” At this point Sara was still studying for her degree. But Sara worked with the numbers and advised the owner on what to do.
And in 3 months, she had helped to get rid of the £30,000 debt and helped the business survive.
Now Sara was only there on a 12 month placement so when that finished she went back to university to finish off her degree. She has enjoyed working in the arts and crafts sector and decided that she would set up a business in that field. But she had so many ideas from her visits to consumer shows, she knew exactly what she wanted to make.
She found out that people love to make hand crafted greeting cards but don’t like the idea of putting in in a plain white envelope when sending it out.
“Wouldn’t it be great if we could create hand crafted envelopes”
It was her the idea for “The Enveloper” was created, a device that helped people to make hand crafted envelopes to go with their hand-crafted greeting cards. It was made out of wood and at the time cost her about £2 to make. She thought she could sell these for £3 each and earn £1 profit each time.
She had thought she had created the best product in the world until she went back to her old boss at the Crafting company and asked if she would sell them in her shop. She said, “Sara, why would people want to make their own envelopes when you can buy them for next to nothing.”
This was a huge setback for Sara as she thought what she had designed was a great product, but she fought on.
She focussed her efforts onto TV shopping channels and managed to get a meeting with Ideal Shop. They liked the idea of “The Enveloper” and told Sara that they would sell it, they would need 8000 units.
Sara didn’t have 8000 units, these were all hand made devices so she would need some time, so they agreed on 8000 units but booked 3 months ahead giving her enough time to get them built. During this time, Sara was still in her final year of her degree.
At the time she did not have the money to pay for the manufacturing process so had worked out a deal to pay for it after she had sold them on Ideal Shop.
Three months had now passed, the devices were built, and Sara was getting ready to go market her products on the shopping channel when they told her that they only needed 1500. And instead of her spending 20 minutes talking about her product, she would just be given 5 minutes.
Distraught by the news and how she would pay for manufacturing, she continued. She did her 5 minute demo but then she was called back again a few minutes later to demonstrate more and more. By the end of the show, she was confused as to why she did so many demonstrations. The staff told her that they had sold out of “The Enveloper”.
Sara said that’s fine, but I still have another 6500 units, but Ideal Shop had sold all of them too, 8000 units in an hour.
Sara was gobsmacked and she had just made £8000 profit, which as a student felt like she'd become a millionaire.
After graduating she continued on the journey and “The Enveloper” was replaced by a newer model “The Ultimate.” It did everything the older model did and more. More than 15 years on and this product is still her best product and sells for £40. Although I have seen it on Amazon For just under £35
Here is a video demonstration of the product by Sara.
The stationery company, Helix had called Sara in to talk about the product to them. They interviewed her for hors about the specifics of her product as well at the patents she owned.
Sara hadn’t heard back from them for a few months despite several calls to find out what was happening. What Helix had done was create a similar product and decided to compete against her.
Sara decided to take them to court and was willing to risk £250,000 for the case, Helix could not risked the £250,000 and had conceded to Sara.
She had just taken Helix to court, and WON!
All of this was whilst she was 23 years old and had a team of 8 staff.
Over the last few years her business has grown from strength to strength. Craft businesses usually do well in economic downturns.
In 2019, Sara employed over 200 staff in 40 countries and has a net worth of £35 million+
She had a dream to be on Strictly come Dancing, but she knew that she wasn’t famous yet, so a friend told her, why don’t you become a Dragon on Dragons Den. She laughed it off and thought, “how could I be a Dragon?”
She decided to call the BBC and in fact they were looking for a new dragon. After a series of interviews, she got the job. She was going to be the new dragon and she would be the youngest dragon to be part of the show.
She then applied for “Strictly Come Dancing” and since she was famous now, so she got in. This was a dream come true. And the rest is history
She ended her talk with a final quote.
“Everything can lead to something, when you lead with the right Mindset”
Sara’s talk was very inspirational to everyone and I have not yet read her book, but I hope to do so in the near future. I got a have a quick chat with her whilst I had a picture taken with her. I’m still waiting for the professional picture (hopefully we are both looking at the camera), but here’s the one from my phone.
