BWB - Buy Women Built Member

Proud member of Buy Women Built 

Buy Women Built began with a moment of clarity for our founder, Sahar Hashemi OBE. After co-founding the UK’s first coffee bar chain, Coffee Republic, growing it to 100 stores, writing the bestselling Anyone Can Do It, and leading a UK Government Taskforce on scale-ups, she saw a tweet in 2020 that expressed a simple but powerful truth: not everyone can invest in or mentor a female founder, but everyone can support them through what they buy.

It highlighted a missing piece she had felt for years. While huge progress had been made in funding, policy and support programmes, visibility remained the quiet barrier. Most consumers simply didn’t know which brilliant brands around them were built by women. Sahar set out to change that by harnessing the power of everyday purchasing. She teamed up with marketing expert Barny Macaulay, and together they created Buy Women Built, starting with a WhatsApp group of just three founders.