CELEBRITY
INTERVIEW
Restaurant traumas aside, Sara would never consider
leaving the North-East, where she lives on the Wynyard
Estate. “This is my home. The majority of our staff are based
here and creating jobs for people in the region is something
I’m so proud of.”
Sara could never be parted from mum Susan either. “Mam
is the reason I wanted to start my own business in the first
place. When I was little, Dad opened a sweet shop in our
village and Mam was the Saturday girl – that’s how they met.
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Mam’s priority was always her children but she wanted to work
too, so Dad set up a wallpaper shop for her and my nan to run.
Mam would walk me to school and Nan would pick me up. I
remember thinking, ‘I want to have a business that fits around
a family.’”
As it turned out, Sara put off having children until she was
29 because of the phenomenal rise of Crafter’s Companion.
“It became a behemoth almost overnight” she admits. “I
started the business at uni in the October and by the time I
graduated the following May it was bigger than the wallpaper
shop my mam had been running for 25 years.”
Sara became a workaholic, even paying the staff wages. “I
would physically deposit money in accounts at the end of the
month. It was a nice reality check for me to just remember that
all these people’s mortgages were getting paid as a result of the
decisions I made.”