It’s International Women’s Day on 8th March, so what better feature for our Blog than an introduction to some of the fantastic women-led businesses that we are proud to work with. Please be introduced to Ruth Munro of Edinburgh Fermentarium, Laura Harnett of Seep and Lisa Lawson of Dear Green Coffee and read more about them below.

Women-owned suppliers spotlight

Dear Green Coffee

Glasgow-based coffee entrepreneur Lisa Lawson, shown top right, heads up a top-notch team of coffee roasting experts at Dear Green, a very successful and much-loved wholesale producer of high-quality speciality coffee.

Having first learned the coffee roasting ropes while on a working holiday in Australia, Lisa’s business dream started with an impulse purchase of a coffee roaster of her own, and now she and her team at Dear Green supply high-quality ethically-sourced coffee to businesses all over Glasgow and across the UK.

Dear Green isn’t just any coffee roaster though; what they do is based on a solid ethical foundation, from their exemplary sourcing principles through to their unquestioning adoption of the Living Wage, so it comes as no surprise that they’ve also gone on to achieve B-Corp certification.

If Lisa wasn’t already busy enough, she also organises Glasgow’s first and only dedicated coffee festival. At Glasgow Coffee Festival, which attracts exhibitors from across the specialty coffee industry, coffee-lovers can expect a weekend brim full of cuppings, tastings and plenty of delicious specialty coffee on tap. You can also enjoy a carefully curated programme of workshops, presentations and competitions.

We love having Dear Green coffee in our catalogue, so much so that we embarked on a collaboration with Lisa and her team to make our own ‘Dear Green City’ blend. It’s a match made (or perhaps roasted) in heaven!

Edinburgh Fermentarium

Edinburgh Fermentarium was founded by Ruth Munro when she found eating fermented foods ‘helped put her system back in balance’.

The idea really started to ferment, as you might say, when Ruth went on a course to learn how to make Korean kimchi. This was a turning point for Ruth, shown top left, as making kimchi for herself and friends went on to become the commercially successful Scottish enterprise you now know to be Edinburgh Fermentarium.

Ruth’s fermented products are all made from scratch in Edinburgh, without vinegar and using locally-grown produce where possible, and you’ll find them in independent businesses across the city. We think people further afield should get to try them too which is why we complement Ruth’s existing supply chain with distribution further afield.

We love Edinburgh Fermentarium’s Mac Kimchi. Give it a try!

You can read more about Ruth and her journey in our feature article here.

Seep

Business founder Laura Harnett was frustrated by the lack of environmentally friendly household cleaning tools in the supermarkets she was visiting. So instead of accepting this sorry situation, she decided to do something about it and, with a team of like-minded people alongside her, she set about developing a range of plastic-free tools to suit all your domestic cleaning needs.

Laura and her team at Seep have since gone from strength to strength with their innovative and eco-friendly approach to problem solving the nation’s need for more sustainable household cleaning solutions. In 2024, Seep achieved B-Corp status and Laura was awarded the Cartier Women’s Initiative Fellowship.

More recently this year, Laura took the brave move to appear on Dragon’s Den, where she was successful in securing not just one offer of investment, but two! With this backing Laura and her brand Seep will be well on their way to achieve their core mission to save 1 billion cleaning tools from landfill by 2030. You can help Laura, Seep and the planet to achieve this aim by getting these products out there. We couldn’t live without their reusable and washable pop-up sponges!

We work with a great many more women-owned suppliers and would love to have written more but we've simply run out of time.
Here are some of the other great female-led establishments we are delighted to be able to work with.