Sara Davies MBE – The Woman Who Built a Craft Empire From a University Bedroom

Who Is Sara Davies?

Sara Davies MBE is a British entrepreneur, television personality, and businesswoman best known as the founder of Crafter’s Companion — a global arts and crafts retail company she started from her university bedroom in 2005 — and as the youngest ever female Dragon on BBC’s Dragons’ Den, which she joined in 2019. She is one of Britain’s most recognisable and genuinely inspiring entrepreneurial stories: a working-class girl from County Durham who turned a single envelope-making tool into a multi-million pound international business.

If you’re here for the quick answer: Sara Davies is 40 years old, has an estimated net worth of £37 million, stepped away from Dragons’ Den in March 2025 to save Crafter’s Companion after it went into administration in January 2025, personally reinvested her own capital to rescue the business and most of its North East jobs, and has since stepped back from day-to-day CEO duties after appointing a new managing director. She is now balancing her involvement with Crafter’s Companion with new television ventures including a new ITV quiz show called Time Is Money.

Quick Facts – Sara Davies

Early Life – Coundon, County Durham

Sara Davies was born on April 23, 1984, in Coundon — a small former mining village in County Durham in the North East of England. It’s not a place that typically features in stories about business empires, which is precisely why her story resonates so powerfully.

She grew up in a close-knit, grounded household. Her father was a retired engineer — a detail that becomes significant later, when it was his practical skills that helped turn his daughter’s business idea from concept into physical reality. She has a sister. The family background was working class in the truest sense — values, work ethic, and community above everything.

At 15, she met Simon Johnson — the boy who would eventually become Simon Davies, her husband and business partner. A childhood sweetheart who stayed. In a world of celebrity relationships manufactured for tabloids, theirs is the kind of story that makes people quietly hopeful.

She attended the local comprehensive, where she was clearly academic enough to earn a place at one of Britain’s better universities. But it was what she did when she got there that changed everything.

University of York – Where the Empire Began

In 2002, Sara began a Business degree at Derwent College, University of York. During her second year, she secured a work placement at a small craft supply company — an industry she had no particular background in, but which turned out to suit her instincts perfectly.

During that placement, she spotted a gap in the market that nobody else had addressed. Craft enthusiasts who wanted to make their own envelopes — cards, invitations, paper crafts — had no simple tool to do so. Everything on the market was either too expensive, too complicated, or simply didn’t exist in the right form.

Sara went home and described the problem to her father. He was a retired engineer. Together they worked out a solution — a simple, elegant envelope-making tool. They found a local carpenter to help build the prototype. The result was The Enveloper — a wooden tool that could fold and create perfectly sized envelopes from any paper.

She launched it on Ideal World, a TV shopping channel, while still a student. In the first 24 hours: 8,000 units sold. In the first six months: 30,000 units.

She was in her early twenties, studying for her finals, and had already built a business turning over £500,000 a year.

She graduated with a first class degree in 2006. By that point, most of her peers were worrying about job applications. Sara already had a company.

Building Crafter’s Companion

From that single product, Sara built Crafter’s Companion into a genuinely global brand. The trajectory was not overnight — it required years of methodical expansion, smart product development, and the kind of daily operational discipline that television rarely captures.

Simon joined the business as Managing Director, turning the childhood sweetheart relationship into one of the more effective husband-and-wife business partnerships in British enterprise.

Company Growth Milestones

The company’s UK headquarters is in Newton Aycliffe, County Durham — Sara’s home territory. The North East location was always deliberate. She could have moved the business to London or a more fashionable postcode. She chose to anchor it in the community where she grew up, providing employment and investment in a region that has needed both.

At its peak, Crafter’s Companion had offices in Corona, California, retail outlets in Evesham, Chesterfield and Colne, and was exporting to more than 40 countries worldwide.

The MBE and Awards – Formal Recognition

In the 2016 New Year Honours, Sara Davies was appointed a Member of the Order of the British Empire — an MBE for services to the economy. She was 31 years old.

Awards and Recognition

Each award on that list represents a different stage of her journey — from emerging talent to established business leader to nationally recognised contributor to British enterprise.

Dragons’ Den – Six Years as the Youngest Female Dragon

On April 23, 2019 — her 35th birthday — Sara Davies joined the panel of BBC’s Dragons’ Den for Series 17, replacing Jenny Campbell. She was the show’s youngest ever female Dragon.

Her approach on the show was immediately distinctive. Where some Dragons lead with scepticism and financial interrogation, Sara led with mentoring instinct. She invested in people as much as businesses — asking about the founder’s story, understanding their motivations, thinking about where the business needed to grow rather than just what it was worth today.

She invested in a diverse range of businesses across her six series — including Malaysian chilli paste brand Mak Tok and bathroom storage solution Shower Gem — building a portfolio that reflected her genuine breadth of commercial interest.

In March 2025, after the conclusion of the first half of Series 22, she announced on Instagram she was stepping away from filming the next series to focus on Crafter’s Companion. Her statement was characteristically direct:

“As a lot of you will know, I’ve taken up my position again as CEO of Crafter’s Companion and my business is my big priority this year. Being a Dragon requires so much dedication and time behind the scenes as you join the life of each business you invest in. It’s so much more than a TV show. That’s why I’ve taken the decision to step away from the Den for now, to focus on my own business, which was my first baby.”

The door was deliberately left open. “For now” is doing a lot of work in that sentence.

The Crafter’s Companion Crisis – The 2025 Story That Defines Her

The post-pandemic period was brutal for the craft market. During COVID lockdowns, crafting had boomed — people at home, looking for creative outlets, spending on supplies. Crafter’s Companion flourished. When the world reopened, that spending evaporated with remarkable speed.

By late 2024, the business was severely loss-making. Its majority shareholder, Growth Partner, filed a notice of intention to appoint administrators at the High Court. The company Sara had built from a bedroom in York was on the brink of collapse.

She got the call on Christmas Eve. Deal memos were arriving at half past midnight. She worked through Christmas Day.

“At half past midnight on Christmas Eve I was receiving deal memos. It’s been literally non-stop,” she told The Chronicle.

She moved quickly. Working with investment group Modella Capital, she significantly increased her own shareholding — investing a substantial amount of her personal capital — and returned as CEO. The pre-pack administration in January 2025 allowed the business to restructure, with the majority of its North East jobs saved.

Over the following eight months, she led a complete operational and financial turnaround — returning the business to profitability, refocusing on core products, and managing the significant disruption caused by US tariff changes under the Trump administration affecting the California operation.

By August 2025, Modella sold its stake to Maven Capital Partners, with Sara increasing her shareholding further. She then stepped back from day-to-day CEO duties, appointing former CBI regional director Diane Sharp as Managing Director, while retaining strategic oversight and a directorship.

Her statement after the turnaround was measured but unmistakably proud:

“We’ve managed to take a business which was severely loss-making and really struggling last year and turn it round in the timescale that we have. That just shows the potential for the business and the industry.”

It is, by any measure, one of the more impressive business rescue stories in recent British enterprise history.

New Television Ventures – Beyond Dragons’ Den

Stepping away from Dragons’ Den hasn’t meant stepping away from television. Sara has been busy on screen in new formats that suit her personality and skills.

The Big Idea Works — a BBC One show where ordinary people with clever product ideas are connected with people who can turn them into reality. It’s essentially Sara doing on television what she did in real life at university — identifying a gap and helping someone fill it.

Time Is Money — a new high-stakes quiz show for ITV, announced in 2025 and hosted by Sara. It represents a significant step into mainstream entertainment presenting beyond the business world.

Both projects point toward a Sara Davies who is expanding her television identity rather than retreating from it — and doing so on her own terms, around a business she has just rescued and rebuilt.

Strictly Come Dancing 2021

In 2021, Sara competed in Series 19 of Strictly Come Dancing, partnered with professional dancer Aljaž Škorjanec.

She approached Strictly the same way she approaches everything — full commitment, no half measures, willing to be genuinely terrible at something before getting better. She was eliminated before the final but earned genuine warmth from the audience and judges for her energy and determination.

The appearance showed viewers a version of Sara Davies that the serious business context of Dragons’ Den doesn’t always reveal — self-deprecating, fun, willing to embarrass herself publicly in the pursuit of doing something well.

Avon UK – Chief Inspiration Officer

In July 2024, Sara was appointed Chief Inspiration Officer for Avon UK — a role specifically designed around her mission of mentoring and empowering women in business.

The appointment made obvious sense. Avon’s entire model is built on female entrepreneurship — women building their own income through the brand’s direct selling structure. Sara’s own story — bedroom startup, MBE, Dragons’ Den — is exactly the kind of narrative that gives that mission genuine credibility.

Books and Thought Leadership

Sara has published two books that reflect different aspects of her entrepreneurial identity.

We Can All Make It — her autobiography, published by Transworld Publishers — tells the full story of Crafter’s Companion from bedroom to boardroom. It’s not a ghostwritten celebrity memoir but a genuinely practical account of how she built the business, with honest discussion of the difficulties alongside the successes.

The Six-Minute Entrepreneur — a more practical guide aimed at aspiring business owners, reflecting her ongoing commitment to accessible entrepreneurship education.

She is a regular keynote speaker at business conferences, serves as a mentor with the Entrepreneurs’ Forum, and is the North East Ambassador for Smart Works Newcastle — a charity supporting unemployed women into work through clothing and coaching.

Personal Life – Simon, Oliver, Charlie and Wynyard

Sara and Simon Davies — childhood sweethearts who met when Sara was 15 — married in September 2007. They have two sons, Oliver and Charlie, and live in Wynyard, Teesside.

The family is grounded in ways that don’t come automatically with £37 million in net worth. She has spoken about keeping the boys’ feet on the ground — they have chores, they earn pocket money, and the family lifestyle is comfortable rather than ostentatious.

Simon’s role in the business — as Managing Director through its growth years — meant the professional partnership and the personal one were always intertwined. That kind of arrangement either strengthens a relationship or ends it. For the Davies family, it has clearly done the former.

Net Worth – The £37 Million Picture

The net worth figure needs context after the 2025 events. Sara personally reinvested significant capital to rescue Crafter’s Companion — reducing her liquid wealth in the short term in exchange for an increased ownership stake in a now-profitable business. That’s a bet on herself and her business that most people in her position would not have had the nerve to make.

Conclusion

Sara Davies built a £37 million empire from a wooden envelope-making tool she designed with her retired engineer father while studying for her finals in York. She anchored her business in the North East when she could have moved it to London. She stepped into a TV studio at 35 and became the youngest female Dragon in the show’s history. She got the call on Christmas Eve 2024 that her business was collapsing and worked through Christmas Day to save it.

There is a version of this story that could have ended very differently — at the administration notice, at the Christmas Eve deal memo, at the point where most people would have walked away and let someone else clean up the mess.

Sara Davies did not walk away. She put her own money back in, rolled her sleeves up, turned the business around in eight months, and then stepped back to let a professional managing director run it while she got back on television and started building the next chapter.

At 40, with a rescued business, a new ITV quiz show, two books, an MBE, and a childhood sweetheart husband who has been beside her for the whole journey — Sara Davies remains one of the most authentic and genuinely earned success stories in British business.