Not only is she a crafting queen, but Sara Davies is also one of our favourite Dragon's from the popular series, Dragons' Den. We caught up with the entrepreneur to find out more about filming Dragons' Den and her love for crafting.
As with all of the series, there have been a few heated moments between herself and fellow Dragons Peter Jones, Deborah Meaden, Steven Bartlett and Touker Suleyman, but according to Sara, it's just business.
“What you’ve got to remember is that it's a business environment. I work with my husband so I know first hand what it can be like. Simon and I, we can be in a board meeting and be on completely different pages, in fact, to be honest we’re usually on different books, let alone a different page in the book.
"We can go hell for leather in a board meeting, totally arguing and then come out, get in the car together, and cook tea when we get home and everything is totally normal. So because I've done that all of my career, I’m used to being able to separate work and personal stuff and what I’ve come to learn in the den is that it’s not personal, it’s just business.
“What I've learnt is that in the den, you don’t need to bring it offset. Don’t get me wrong, I’m as guilty as anyone else, when you’ve won an investment and it’s been quite a competitive one, we’ll come off set and we’ll be in the green room looking up the business thinking I've got an absolute cracker there! There’ll definitely be a bit of banter and whatnot, but there’s never any animosity that goes off set.
“When we’re filming, one of the most enjoyable parts of the whole filming experience is actually every evening. Quite often, we don’t finish on set until after 9pm a lot of nights, but we’ll go straight for dinner and it’s brilliant because over dinner we might talk over what’s gone on in the den that day, might be some political or economic discussions or what’s going on in the world, we might even be talking about the weather, but we get on great as a group of friends, and that’s a completely different dynamic to what you see in the den.”
It's crazy to think that Dragons' Den has been on our screens since 2005 - not many prime time TV shows can say they've been raking in the viewing figures for that long, so why does Sara think it's stood the test of time?
“I remember watching Dragons' Den as a student at university when it first came out. As students we loved it, my dad loves it, people in my office tell me their parents also love it. I just think for a programme to appeal to that many generations, and to be a family show that you can sit down and have three generations watching the programme and all really enjoying it, there’s not many programmes that you see on TV that appeal to that big of an audience.”
The show has seen many dragon's come and go over the years, and when Tej Lalvani announced that he was leaving the show, it made way for new dragon, Steven Bartlett. As the youngest entrepreneur ever to become a dragon, we wondered what Sara's first impressions of Steven were.
“I decided I better get to know him, so I bought his book and I must admit, I read his book - ‘Happy Sexy Millionaire’ - and I thought, this guy is going to be full of himself, he's going to be a nightmare to work with, the testosterone down that area of the panel is going to be a nightmare, so I decided I should not judge a book by its cover as they say and I’ll get to know him, and as I read the first few pages of the book I realised that that was a really catchy title but it doesn't tell the story of the guy in the book, so I warmed to him through the pages of the book. I had dinner with him for the first time last week and we hit it off straight away.”
If you're into your crafting, you'll have no doubt heard of Sara's crafting company, Crafters Companion. As a keen crafter herself, she believes crafting is much more than just a hobby.
“Crafting is so much more than a hobby, it becomes a bit of a passion and I think it’s that passion that really drives me every day as we develop new products, it’s the love that the customers have for it. And the great thing is we’ve seen this huge growth in the industry through lockdown and I think with all of this, there are so many mental health and wellbeing benefits to crafting so I think with all of that it’s not just the physical act of doing the crafts, but it really instils community in people, so what you’ll find is you’ll end up with these communities that are people who want to make people feel really good.
"If you ever see a Facebook group of people who do craft, if they ever pluck up the courage to share a picture of their craft in that group, it’ll get hundreds of comments from other crafters saying how good it is, and they just make each other feel good about it and our job is to fuel that community and fuel that feel good factor."
Dragons’ Den airs Thursdays, 8pm on BBC One or catch up on BBC iPlayer
Lorna White is the Senior Digital Writer for Mother&Baby. After running the Yours magazine website, specialising in content about caring for kids and grandchildren, Lorna brought her expertise to Mother&Baby in 2020. She has a keen interest in a range of topics from potty training and nutrition to baby names and early development and has a wide range of experienced medical experts and professionals at her fingertips. In her spare time, she enjoys spending time with her two young sisters, dog walking and enjoying the outdoors with her family.