Life has never been easy or straight-forward for Rachel Watkyn, who spent part of her childhood in care. An early job took her to Sierra Leone and she was there during the military coup. The poverty she witnessed inspired her vision for a Fairtrade business.
It was initially a jewellery company but her struggle to find green packaging sparked the idea for Tiny Box Company, supplying businesses with attractive, ethical packaging.
Despite the problems that life continued to throw at her – including cancer, fire, flooding, an IT hack and of course the pandemic – Tiny Box has flourished. It’s now the UK’s largest online gift packaging e-commerce company with 90 employees, 700 products and 120,000 customers.
If Rachel’s name is familiar, it may be because you have seen here on Dragon’s Den – she is the programme’s most successful female entrepreneur yet. Or it could be because you heard her speak at our Hybrid event in November. That we’ve invited her back again is testament to the power of her story, which we wanted to share with the wider Summit audience.
Brighton Summit: Unite was on 29 April 2022.
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