Vanilla Underground’s recent growth has been formidable, with online sales of its officially licensed clothing and apparel going – to use a technical term – completely ballistic. Armchair shoppers are ordering Minecraft T-shirts, Peppa Pig slippers and Harry Potter rucksacks faster than Sonic the Hedgehog. And the trend has handed the company’s Tamworth-based co-founders, married couple Deniz and Jason Yarnell, a heady combination of excitement, joy, and – because you can’t run a business without it – worry.

What is a power-surge moment? Quite simply, it’s a few seconds of intensity that can catapult your business to a new level. Power-surge moments don’t happen often and they come about only when an entrepreneur’s determination consistently over-rides their desire for comfort and safety. In this story, we discover how Rimi and Manav Thapar created four electrifying ‘power surge’ moments to turbocharge their brand, LoveRaw…

PROPERCORN’S HQ buzzes with youthful energy. Stroll through the front door, past the doorbell emblazoned with the words ‘Done Properly’, and you find yourself in one of London’s more life-affirming offices. The ‘guilt-free’ popcorn brand’s co-founders Cassandra Stavrou, an ex-ad agency employee, and Ryan Kohn, an entrepreneur since university, tell us how it all began…

When it comes to pulling off creative ideas, Marie Owen is your go-to leader. Founder of an award-winning production services company, she is the advertising and film industry’s real-life dream-maker. Since starting the business in 2006, Marie has worked with the likes of Harry Styles, Meryl Streep and Marcus Rashford. But it hasn’t all been celebrities and glamour. “I didn’t take a wage for at least four years. But there was always a hunger within me to do more and be better.”

Husband and wife duo Aneisha Soobroyen and Jack Walker, set out to solve their pet’s ‘tummy troubles’ when they discovered probiotics. This put them on a journey to start Scrumbles from their London home, creating gut friendly food for cats and dogs. Founded in 2018 they later appeared on Dragons’ Den, where the founders rejected […]

We live in an era of remote working, office pool tables and CEOs signing off emails with smiley emojis. But beneath the fluff, many people still believe deep down that fun and work do not go together ­– that fun is expensive and a distraction from the DEADLY SERIOUS business of running a company. In these people (you […]