Grow big or go home: why I quit my job to set up a seed business

Being diagnosed with a rare type of cancer encouraged Kate Cotterill, co-founder of She Grows Veg, to “go big” on her seed business. In only nine months the Suffolk-based venture had sold more than 47,000 heirloom seed packets.

Cotterill, 47, who had worked in advertising for 25 years, knew deep down that there was a second stage to her career. But she had to put it on hold when in March 2002 she was diagnosed with lentigo maligna, a kind of melanoma.

She powered on, making a boardroom presentation with a plaster covering the hole in her face left by a significant part of her nose being removed. “This cancer jumps. You must get it out before it takes over,” said Cotterill, who has three children. Facial reconstruction followed and life continued. “It was a massive lesson in resilience for me and at about the same time my cousin died tragically, and my husband, Rob, lost his job,” she recalled.

“I’ve got a very strong sense now that life is too short and I think if you’re going to build a company, you want to be winding down in your fifties, so I had to go hell for leather,” she said.

As she recovered, she undertook a garden design qualification while keeping her day job. “I’ve got three strapping teenage boys that need feeding and I wanted to grow my own veg,” she said. She enrolled on a year-long course at the Beth Chatto Gardens in Colchester, Essex, majoring in the philosophy of “right plant, right time”.

It was there that she sat next to Lucy Hutchings, who went on to become her business partner and has appeared in the BBC’s Gardeners’ World. “Lucy is a jewellery designer by trade, heavily dyslexic yet amazingly creative,” said Cotterill, who knew early on that the two of them were a good match. Getting itchy feet with her job, juggling family life and a husband who was often travelling, not to mention the shadow of cancer — Cotterill knew something had to change.

While she retreated to the corporate world, Hutchings was drowning in seed enquiries and had grown her Instagram following to 170,000 while securing a show garden at Gardeners’ World Live at the NEC in Birmingham.

Established suppliers Thompson & Morgan and Mr Fothergill’s dominate the seed market, yet Cotterill said she had crunched the market data and knew there was a massive opportunity.

Two weeks later she went back to Hutchings and told her she wanted in. “It was terrifying because I was ditching a successful career and Lucy also felt worried that I was doing that. But I am a believer that you ‘go big or go home’ and if you start something part time you never fully give it your all,” Cotterill said.

She invested £10,000 of her own money. “My husband was very supportive, and it was a real ‘strap your big girl pants on’ moment. We agreed to give it six months.”

After doing some consultancy work to raise more funds, last November She Grows Veg started trading. The driven duo took their blank canvas and began to figure out how to package and distribute the seeds. Cotterill knew early on that the business had to act like a big company and all decisions were made with scale in mind. Crowdfunding garnered £25,000 in investment.

“There’s a lot of red tape. The [Department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs] regulations are quite extraordinary after Brexit and it’s extremely hard to get seeds into the country from abroad,” Cotterill said. But the pair weren’t deterred.

Their market focuses on the quirky, colourful and extraordinary. Among the offerings is a 1,500-year-old cave bean that has been rescued from extinction and a Japanese carrot, developed 400 years ago that can grow up to 1.5 metres in length. Packaging carries a QR code linking to YouTube tutorials to help growers take their seeds from packet to plate.

Their popularity was recognised with a double gold win at this year’s Chelsea Flower Show and the Hampton Court Palace Garden Festival for their exhibit featuring heirloom vegetable varieties from their seed range.

The success means they have hired nine people on flexible contracts. “Many of our staff are mums who want to do the school run and see their children so they do the hours they can. We have absolutely no restrictions and we’ve created an environment with wonderful women who are all very well supported and happy as a result,” Cotterill said.

As to what’s next, the entrepreneurs want to build on the quarter of a million turnover they have achieved so far, seek out the ever more exotic seeds and continue to build on that legacy to get people growing.