Brand New Directions: the very best of British three inspiring businesses

Traditional with a twist – that’s how these three readers have made their mark in business

‘All our flowers are grown in the south West’

Georgie Newbery, 51, is married with two children and lives in Somerset. She is the founder of Common Farm Flowers, a business selling home-grown British flowers.

✢ THE IDEA When I was younger I worked in Paris as an assistant at American Vogue and as an administrator for the designer John Galliano. It sounds glamorous, but my French was hopeless and I returned home because I wanted to pursue my dream of writing. Eventually, having published three notvery-successful novels, I found myself developing TV programmes for a living, but when I met my husband we decided to abandon the rat race by buying the classic London-leaver’s dream, a falling-down Victorian farmhouse – we found ours in Somerset. The idea was we’d be self-sufficient and live like Tom and Barbara in The Good Life, but we struggled, mainly because we couldn’t bear to sell our adorable little pigs for meat. The local fox was very fond of our chickens, and I couldn’t get excited enough about carrots and cabbages to turn them into a real living. Then a neighbour sent me some flowers. They were so lovely, so out of sheer nosiness I looked online to see how much a bouquet like that would cost. I was staggered and felt this might make me a living. That was my light bulb moment. We had seven acres of land that we weren’t using effectively so I did some research on what and how much I’d need to grow – and how much I could charge.

✢ WHAT HAPPENED NEXT I went off to the local garden centre and spent about £35 on packets of seeds to grow sweet peas, verbena, sunflowers, marigolds and delphiniums, and my mother sent me some dahlia tubers to try. I planted rows and rows in about a third of an acre at first. Luckily this all came about in April – seed-planting time – so I was able to grow things relatively quickly. We invested in a polytunnel so we could extend the growing season, and I did a lot of research to ensure I could grow all sorts of flowers. We made our

USP flowers that we could grow easily and well in our mild, Somerset climate. Our motto is “grown not flown”, to reduce the carbon footprint. We also wanted to limit the amount of pesticides we used and encourage wildlife to flourish. I started off by selling flowers at farmers’ markets and doing local weddings. Gradually word spread and customers asked for flowers to be delivered. I had a website made and orders started to build.

✢ BREAKTHROUGH

MOMENT When we looked at the figures after three years of hard graft and realised we were actually in profit, although we still continue to plough most of that back into the business. I also remember spotting a mention of our flowers by the lovely Dawn French on Twitter. Obviously it’s marvellous to hear from all of our customers – and we’ve had some really super feedback – but I did feel we’d arrived when she did it!

✢ STEEPEST LEARNING

CURVE Realising we weren’t going to make serious money from weddings. It’s a pleasure to do them and I love it but they aren’t going to make us rich because they’re specialised and labour-intensive. We then decided to make the focus of our business delivery flowers and workshops.

✢ WHERE I AM NOW There are three of us working our socks off full-time and one part-time, and we have a loyal band of seasonal freelancers. We do around 50-60 weddings a year and about 30 workshops and deliver around 30 bouquets a week. We’ve had customers from all walks of life, even royalty! We’re hoping to develop partnerships with soap, perfume and wallpaper brands – the possibilities are endless. >>

BUSINESS IN FIGURES

Start-up costs: £3,535 Comprising…

Seeds: £35

Polytunnel: £1,000

Postage and packing: £500 Website: £1,500

Sundries £500

Current turnover: £150,000 Website: commonfarmflowers.com