Women historically faced a ‘glass ceiling’ in business. Now it seems they’ve hit a ‘cash ceiling’ too. The all-female team at Suffolk firm, She Grows Veg, battled against bias in funding and support to become a thriving start-up on their own terms, as co-founder Kate Cotterill explains to East Anglia in Business.
If women could scale up new businesses at the same rate as men, billions more could be poured into the economy, but significant challenges remain.
When marketing expert Kate Cotterill and former jewellery designer to the stars, Lucy Hutchings, launched She Grows Veg in 2023, they could not have anticipated the barriers that lay ahead.
The budding company had difficulties securing its first bank account and the pair also faced discrimination trying to get a business loan, with a broker admitting it was harder for a female entrepreneur to secure a loan.
Negative reactions from those in the industry to their product – coupled with others who dismissed their business idea as a mere hobby – motivated Lucy and Kate to prove the ‘naysayers’ wrong and work even harder for success. This fueled their determination to build a thriving company.
Even our brand name is female!” laughs Lucy. “We love supporting anyone who is passionate about growing their own food and developing these skills. A huge part of what we do is around creating a supportive community, whether you’re a novice gardener or an expert grower! Over the last year and a half we’ve achieved success beyond our expectations and 2025 is set to be bigger and better still!”
Kate takes up the story.
What’s your business all about?
She Grows Veg is an heirloom veg seed brand on a mission to help as many people as possible to grow their own food.
We are our customers’ growing ally and provide all the support and resources they need to succeed in a really colourful, flavoursome and nutritious harvest.
Why did you decide to set up a business together?
Lucy and I met seven years ago. We were doing a garden design course. During our year of studying Lucy started @shegrowsveg on Instagram.
She built a huge following very quickly whilst sharing her passion for growing unusual heirloom veg. She was being asked constantly where her followers could buy the seeds and none of them were available in the UK.
Lucy shared that with me, and with my 25-year career in marketing in mind, I did some research on the potential in the market. It was clear there was a big opportunity to disrupt the seed market and do things differently.
What makes She Grows Veg different from similar companies?
Our USP is that we sell only heirloom and open-pollinated varieties, many of which aren’t available through other companies in the UK. We select all our varieties based on flavour and looks and present them in a stunning way with inspiring photography and innovative packaging.
We are a sustainable business, so we don’t send out brochures: all of our resources are digital and our packaging is compostable. We are working closely with two amazing charities – Seeds for Growth (creating green spaces in social housing estates) and Suffolk Mind (GreenCare wellbeing allotments) – giving everyone the opportunity to grow food.
I’m surprised to hear there’s still discrimination against women entrepreneurs like yourselves. Is this openly admitted by finance companies, or a subtle bias?
Securing a bank account and business loan due to general gender bias was a huge hurdle. We went out to all the high street banks and no one wanted to let us open a business account.
Really still to this day, we don’t particularly know why, but we managed to get an account with Monzo, which has functioned okay, but it’s not really sophisticated enough for us.
Where the real gender bias issue came in was when we were trying to secure a business loan. We were going out for around £25,000, not an enormous amount.
I tried everything. I approached banks and loan companies. Some of the loan companies that would lend us money had a rate of around 40% percent, which is absolutely outrageous and untenable for a small business.
Eventually I ended up chatting to a broker who said to me, ‘I’m really sorry to say this in 2024 (which it was at the time), but actually, as women, you’re going to find it harder to secure a loan, which I found absolutely shocking. Our tenacity paid off and we secured funds through sheer hard work!
How long did it take to get the finance together?
We finally managed to get a loan through the biz Britain, British business bank, and they were superb. It was a very rigorous process, they checked our business plan and everything we were doing, but they were the only people that would lend. In the end, we couldn’t get a loan that was below 40% interest from anywhere else. So, they’ve been superb, and they really backed us and helped us out.
What’s been your biggest challenge, apart from financing?
Keeping up with the growth trajectory whilst managing cash flow carefully has been challenging. The business has grown so fast that we’ve already invested in a second website, big inventory management system, key people and product expansion. All of which costs money!
How do you source your products?
We source our seeds from 3 places:
We farm some of our seeds and will be producing our own seed for all our tomatoes, chillies and peppers this year.
UK seed companies – we have a great network of artisan suppliers.
International seed companies – we’ve developed relationships with some really rare and specialist suppliers now to secure some fascinating heirloom seeds.
What’s been the response from customers?
It has been overwhelmingly positive. Our message seems to be very timely. People want to know where their food comes from and they don’t want manmade produce, so they are steering away from hybrids and GMO and towards some of these more interesting heirlooms. We are proud to have won FEEFO’s gold award this year for our amazing customer service.
How do you see the company growing?
As a business we never stand still and have so many great and really interesting new seed varieties coming down the line. We never stop innovating on that. We’ve just launched a subscription service, sending people the right seeds at the right time to sow them with all the growing advice on a QR code and that has really taken off very fast.
We are also looking a few years ahead and want to develop a She Grows Veg app as well as grow the business and our gifting range. We are investing heavily in marketing and aim to double our revenue this year. So, there’s a huge push on growing the business and fast.
Any tips for budding female entrepreneurs?
Our motto is to ‘grow big or go home’, and I think I tell myself that all the time. I think positive affirmations and positive self-talk are really, really important for women in business.
You are the only person that can remind yourself that you are absolutely capable of executing on anything you want to do. I talk to myself all the time and say ‘You deserve to be here, your ideas are amazing, look at what you’ve created’.
I also think looking for networks like Female Founders Rise, or even mentors, is really important. Women need sounding boards to just give the reassurance they’re on the right track and they’re doing the right things.
I’d advise building a network of mentors and sounding boards that you can tap in to when needed to help you make decisions. And have courage in your conviction; if you’ve done the research and see a market opportunity, if you have a strategy and have considered your marketing and your budgeting, then go for it! Let go of imposter syndrome – which, by the way -men also have, they just ignore it more efficiently than us!
Anything else you’d like to add
We are proud to have really strong values, the first of which is kindness. We have a team of 13 women who are all happy to work at She Grows Veg because we support them so well. Many of our team have chosen flexible contracts so that they can work around their families as well as enjoy a career.
