We caught up with Julie Macken, the founder of Neve’s Bees, to discover the story behind the business, her vision and the importance of purposeful businesses. >>
What is the vision behind Neve’s Bees?
Our vision is to create a range of skincare products that are good for you and good for nature. You can have really good and beautiful products simply from what Mother Nature has given us.
What is the organisation’s mission?
Our passion is wildflower meadows – it is estimated that we have lost 94% of our lowland meadows in the UK – prime habitat for pollinators – we want to bring these back! We donate money back to our local Wildlife Trust, which does a lot of work with nature recovery. I am also a Trustee of the charity. In addition, we do promotions throughout the year, giving a free pack of flower seeds with all qualifying orders. In this way, we have created hundreds of little meadows throughout the UK.
If we don’t stop destroying nature and start bringing it back, things are going to go downhill a lot quicker. The more the younger generation see and think ‘Doesn’t that flower look beautiful’, ‘Doesn’t that birdsong sound great’, ‘Doesn’t that blossom smell amazing’, the more they will think, ‘Maybe I won’t plough it up’, ‘Maybe I won’t drop litter in it’, ‘Maybe I will learn more about it’.
The more people know and care about the meadows, the more there will be for future generations.
What is great about running a business in Oxford?
There are a lot of people and organisations that think like me in Oxford, in the sense that business should be a force for good rather than just making money for shareholders. There is definitely a growing movement in Oxford, promoting purposeful business which is fab!
How has the pandemic affected the business and how did Neve’s Bees adapt?
Neve’s Bees has three routes to market: country markets and Christmas fairs, independent shops and online orders. Our revenue was roughly split equally 3 ways. However, as a result of the pandemic we switched the business model completely to selling online. We optimised our website, wrote blogs, ran Facebook promotions; we threw all of our energy online. Since then, our online business has grown more than threefold and profits have more than trebled.
A flexible business model allows you to be much more agile. Thus, from a bad situation, we have learned a lot and the business will be stronger going forwards.
What does Neve’s Bees have planned for 2021?
One of our learnings in 2020 is that people seem to love our current products, the brand and what we stand for, but are looking for a broader range of products. Throughout the year we’ve been trialling all sorts of new natural skincare products – watch this space for our new ranges and new website coming soon!
What support has Neve’s Bees received through the eScalate programme and has this helped the business expand?
The most helpful aspect of the programme is having a peer-to-peer group and knowing that there are others who are doing the same and thinking in the same way as you are. Having this foundation and support network has been extremely valuable.
Our thanks to University of Oxford student, Kush Patel for collecting and writing this case study for OSEP.