Having set up Crafter’s Companion while still a student, Sara Davies has taken the crafting world by storm – and this weekend she’s opening her first store. She talks to Sarah Millington

IT was such a simple idea, as so often is the case with brilliance, but when it came to Coundon's Sara Davies, she was still an impoverished student. Having looked into the crafting market, she’d realised that while card-making was popular, envelopes only came in standard sizes. Wouldn’t it be much better, she thought, if they could be made to fit?

This led to Sara devising the Enveloper, enabling crafters to make whatever-sized envelope, in whatever design, they chose. Being a student, she couldn’t afford to have it made professionally, so she asked a local carpenter to construct it from MDF.

She then knocked on the door of a shopping channel and asked if maybe the next time it featured cards, she could come on and demonstrate her new device. Sara got her big break – and her fledgling business, Crafter’s Companion, became an instant success.

“We launched on October 24, 2005, and by Christmas, we had sold 30,000,” she says. “It was just the product to have that Christmas. We couldn’t keep up with production. We couldn’t make them fast enough.” By the time she graduated, with a first class honours degree, Crafter’s Companion had a turnover of more than £500,000.

Sara came to crafting by an unusual route. Though she had made a few things as a child, she’d never been especially creative. It was only when she went to work for a crafting company as part of her management degree at York University that she understood how big the industry was. She fell in love with it – and instinctively felt that what it needed was someone with her skillset.

“Just having a year in this industry made me think, ‘God, that’s amazing’,” says Sara. “It’s so much more to people than a hobby – it’s a passion. A lot of the industry was serviced by people who were hobbyists and were developing things based on personal taste. I felt that if I could come at it from a business angle, I could research the trends and identify gaps in the market and establish a brand.”

Her early identification of TV as a sales platform has proven invaluable. Now there are six staff members, including Sara, who appear on shopping channels like Hochanda, demonstrating crafting while simultaneously selling products. Naturally gregarious, the 32-year-old is relaxed in front of the camera. “I love it,” she enthuses. “Nothing gives you a buzz quite like live selling like that, especially when you’ve developed the product. There are people who are better than me at crafts who support me on the shows. I’ve got these professional people who make beautiful finished samples that I’ll have on set.”

Aside from TV selling, the other main strands of the business are supplying craft retailers – anything from small independents to Hobbycraft – and direct sales through the website. Due to the nature of the industry, there’s a lot of contact with customers. “For all we are a manufacturer, we’ve always had a lot of communication with the consumer,” says Sara. “Over the past ten years, we’ve built up a really big consumer brand.”

When she started out, one of the first things Sara did was fly to the US to explore the opportunities. Now Crafter’s Companion has a base in Santa Ana, California, where about 30 per cent of its 96 staff are based. It’s a market that Sara can only see growing.

“I fly out there every six to eight weeks and do shows on one of the shopping channels out there,” she says. “Then we supply stores across America. There are a number of channels, but on a much larger scale. It’s very mainstream out there.”

Sara, who lives in Stockton and grew up in the Bishop Auckland area, always knew she wanted to go into business. Her parents ran the Wear Valley Decorating Centre, which her sister has now taken over, and she grew up with this as a way of life. “I knew that when I grew up, I wanted to have a business,” she says.

Now she’s going to open her first shop, in Newton Aycliffe. She feels it will help her further connect with her customers and act as a focal point for the community.

“There’s all these stores all over the country and a lot of them are small but they’re like little Aladdin’s caves full of exciting nooks and crannies filled to the brim with products,” says Sara. “Then you’ve got Hobbycraft, which is like a supermarket for crafts. What we want to be is a hybrid between the two. I don’t think someone’s going to wake up in the morning and think, ‘I need a pot of glue’. I think people will come for a day out.

“Instead of it just being a store, we’ve got a huge inspiration centre so, for example, the local Knit and Natter group will meet there, or the WI group will get together and we’ll have an expert to teach them things. People can come and get involved and learn about crafts. Then, of course, everything they need will be hanging on the peg next to them.”

According to Sara, crafting is increasing in popularity – even during the economic downturn she says people reverted to a “make do and mend” philosophy. This makes her confident of success, both for the shop and Crafter’s Companion as a whole.

“A few years ago we were riding on the coat-tails of some of the bigger companies, whereas now we’re one of the bigger ones,” she says. “Part of opening the store is that I want to get more people interested in crafting. If we could try to achieve that on a countrywide scale that would be lovely.

“My long-term objective is to grow the industry. I want to inspire and educate people and just be an Aladdin’s cave for the magpie crafters that are already out there.”

crafterscompanion.co.uk

The new store will open on Horndale Avenue, Newton Aycliffe Industrial Estate, on the May Bank Holiday weekend.