Founder of Crafters Companion and TV Presenter
Sara Davies MBE is the founder and creative director of Crafter’s Companion. She was born in Coundon to entrepreneurial parents, Frank and Susan, and today lives in County Durham with her husband Simon and her children, Oliver and Charlie.
Sara established Crafter’s Companion while studying for a Business Management degree at York University. During a placement at a small craft company, she spotted a gap in the market for a tool that could create bespoke envelopes for handmade cards. With help from her retired engineer father, Sara designed and launched a ground-breaking craft product called The Enveloper.
After securing a slot on TV shopping channel Ideal Word, The Enveloper became an instant hit, selling 1,500 in the first ten minutes and 30,000 units within six months of the initial demonstration. This demand led Sara to develop her first line of innovative products for the craft market. She left university with a first-class honours degree and a business turning over half a million pounds.
Today, Crafter’s Companion is a household name in the industry. It has expanded its range of papercraft products to include sewing and needlecraft items, in addition to its own brand of art materials, Spectrum Noir.
The company designs, manufactures and sells its craft-related products to customers across 40 countries and employs more than 200 people worldwide. It continues to celebrate its North East roots, with a head office, warehouse and store in County Durham, and has established stores in Chesterfield and Evesham. Crafter’s Companion also has a US head office and warehouse in Corona, California.
Crafter’s Companion has appeared in the Sunday Times’ SME Export Track 100 list four times. It ranked at number 73 in 2019, 31 in 2018, after experiencing 72% year-on-year- growth in export sales, 52 in 2017 and number 26 in 2015.
To date, the business has proudly collected more than 30 awards for the company’s achievements and for Sara’s accomplishments as an entrepreneur, in addition to a multitude of craft industry awards for its innovative craft products. These include the Queen’s Award for International Trade, the Shell Livewire Young Entrepreneur, Women of the Future Award and the Stevie Women in Business award for Young Entrepreneur, as well as International Business of the Year at the Federation of Small Businesses Awards.
Sara has also been recognised in the ‘Who’s Who of Britain’s Business Elite’, CNBC’s UK’s ‘Top Ten Brilliant Entrepreneurs’ and received the Creative Entrepreneur of the Year at the Great British Entrepreneur Awards.
In 2016, Sara was presented with an MBE in the Her Majesty’s Birthday Honours List, for services to the economy.
Sara regularly features on the Create and Craft TV channel in the UK, in addition to the Home Shopping Network (HSN) in the US, QVC Germany and QVC UK. She was the founding Chair of the board of directors at the Craft Hobby Association UK, now known as the AFCI-UK, which complemented her role on the board of the affiliate US chapter.
The entrepreneur is passionate about championing women in business, mentoring and the
North East of England.
In 2019, Sara was named as the youngest entrepreneur to join BBC One’s Dragons’ Den and she danced her way to week seven on series 19 of Strictly Come Dancing with her partner Aljaž Škorjanec in 2021.
Sara has written two books, her autobiography – We Can All Make It – and a step-by-step
craft project book Craft Your Year which was released in October 2023.
She regularly co-presents on BBC’s magazine programme, Morning Live, and judged BBC’s Ultimate Wedding Planner with Fred Siriex and Raj Somaiya in summer 2023.
In 2024 Sara was awarded an Honorary Degree of Doctor of the University of York, where she first studied for her Bachelor’s Degree. Alongside Vicky Pattison, Laura Whitmore and Alex Scott, Sara completed Comic Relief’s first all-female celebrity challenge in February 2024, trekking four days across the Arctic to raise money for Red Nose Day.
The entrepreneur’s new show, Making It with Sara Davies helps aspiring inventors take their innovative ideas from paper to create fully functional, commercial products and will air on the BBC later in 2024.
READ MORE