Fantastic Female Founder Story with She Grows Veg
How would people describe you both?
Lucy is the creative and Kate is the driving force. We are both kind, collaborative and supportive.
When and how did you decide to start up She Grows Veg
Lucy and I met seven years ago. We were doing a garden design course at Beth Chatto gardens and we sat next to each other on the first day, and then we sat next to each other for a whole year while we were still studying.
What was the time frame from the initial idea to the beginning/website launch?
During our garden design course, Lucy started @shegrowsveg on Instagram, and she shared her growing journey with her Instagram followers and grew a following there.
She got a sense while she was doing that, that there was some potential in the seed market to sell unusual varieties. As she introduced her followers to her unusual veg, they started saying, where do I get these seeds? And she had to say, ‘well, you can't buy these in the UK’. And so she came to me about two years ago and said, listen, I've got an idea, I think people want these seeds. I’d spent 25 years in marketing so I went away and did some market research and saw there was very clear opportunity for a really interesting and new approach to being a seed company.
So having done the research and obviously getting the feedback that Lucy had, we decided to start a company and She Grows Veg was born.
From idea to starting to sell was 6 months. We started trading in November 2023.
What did you want to be when you grew up?
Kate always wanted to be in marketing and Lucy wanted to be a fashion designer
When did you become interested in growing vegetables, how and why?
Lucy started growing unusual veg whilst she was going through a challenging period of her personal life and did a deep dive into heirloom growing. Kate started growing food for her family - she has 3 strapping boys who are always hungry!
Did you both love vegetables as children?
Yes and no. Like all kids you tend to have to be encouraged to eat vegetables but we were both lucky enough that our parents did that and instilled in us a love of food. What we love about our business is that the veg we sell is fun, colourful and different and kids love it!
What do you love about your job?
It marries our passions with our skill sets that we’ve accumulated over many years. We are also on a mission to get as many people as possible to grow their food which impacts the environment and people’s wellbeing which makes us unbelievably happy.
Lucy, have you given up your jewellery designing or do you dabble? Perhaps some vegetable pendants in the future?
The business is all-consuming, so I don’t have time at the moment—maybe some vegan jewellery one day!
What have been the biggest challenges as female founders?
There were lots of challenges! Securing a bank account and business loan due to general gender bias was a huge hurdle. It’s really interesting; we went out to all the high street banks, and no one wanted to let us open a business account. Really still to this day, we don't particularly know why, but we managed to get an account with Monzo, which has functioned okay, but it's not really sophisticated enough for us. We're now looking at another banking option, and actually, now that we've been up and running for a while, and we've got financials that we can share with people, I think it’s going to be easier.
The real gender bias issue came in when we were trying to secure a business loan. We were going out for around £25,000, not an enormous amount. I tried everything. I approached banks and loan companies. Some of the loan companies that would lend us money had a rate of around 40% percent, which is absolutely outrageous and untenable for a small business. Eventually I ended up chatting to a broker who said to me, I'm really sorry to say this, in 2024 which it was at the time, but actually, as women, you're going to find it harder to secure a loan, which I found absolutely shocking.
We finally managed to get a loan through the biz Britain, British business bank, and they were superb. It was a very rigorous process, they checked our business plan and everything we were doing, but they were the only people that would lend. In the end, we couldn't get a loan that was below 40% interest from anywhere else. So, they've been superb, and they really backed us and helped us out.
We also came across some men in the horticulture industry who thought we were setting up a seed company as a hobby or that people didn't want heirloom varieties - we’ve taken great pleasure in proving them wrong on both counts!
What’s Your perfect day?
Some exercise and gardening in the great outdoors, following by a delicious meal with the family
An object you would never part with
Lucy - mobile phone!
Kate - my dog Tiggy
Tiggy, the boss
The biggest female influence in your life
We have built some great mentors around us and that network helps Kate particularly in running the business
An unforgettable place you’ve travelled to in the past 5 years
Kate - Kefalonia in Greece
Lucy - adores our home county of Suffolk
Where would you like to go next?
Kate - Cambodia
Lucy - South America
Favourite thing you’ve bought this year?
We’re not very materialistic people so it’s usually seeds and plants!
Your favourite website
A recent “find”
Some incredible new heirloom seeds - we are obsessed with!
The books on your bedside table
Kate - Rocket Fuel (a business book)
Rocket Fuel, Kate’s current book
Lucy - any fantasy books
If you weren’t doing what you do
We’d be garden designers
In your fridge you’ll always find…?
Hummus
Favourite hotel
The Newt in Somerset
The Newt, Somerset
What’s next for She Grows Veg?
We never stand still and have so many great, really interesting new seed varieties coming down the line. We never stop innovating on that. We've just launched a subscription service, so we send people the right seeds at the right time to sow them with all the growing advice on a QR code and that has really taken off very fast. So we're very excited about that.
We are looking a few years ahead and want to develop a She Grows Veg app and we are looking to grow the business and our gifting range.
We are investing heavily in marketing and we're looking to double our revenue this year. So there’s a huge push on growing the business and fast.