The latest episode of the Leading By Nature podcast finds Giles Hutchins in conversation with the founder and CEO of Cotswold Fayre and Flourish, Paul Hargreaves who talks about the B Corp movement and how since certifying in 2015, he and his team have been able to influence 50 of their suppliers to certify. There are another 20 suppliers on the journey in Cotswold Fayre’s accelerator course for B Corps which it established 18 months ago to crystallise its efforts in this space.
Although the business is a mature one with 24 years of operating under its belt, we hear about how Cotswold Fayre hasn’t always had a smooth ride, building the resilience it enjoys today through two major bumps in the road, both to do with warehousing and logistics. Cotswold Fayre’s business model is to source, aggregate and distribute products from small, high quality artisan producers into independent retailers – a service that helps them stay at the forefront of exciting new products and trends without taking their eye off the shop floor.
Paul shares his stories comparing the utter despair of the first warehouse meltdown with the tenacity that helped power his team through the second one, the major difference being that they undertook it in the knowledge it would reduce their carbon footprint by 47%.
Giles reflects that organisational resilience is built through the experience of surviving knocks and shocks sharing his mantra that ‘Adversity reveals genius, prosperity conceals it’ and the insight that the thing we want to most avoid in business is very often what makes us who we are.
Another entertaining story of regenerative leadership – listen out for the Kenya connection and if you too find the nexus of fine food and B Corps too tempting to resist, head over to the Cherish blog to catch our very own 5 Minutes With Paul Hargreaves.
S2 E03: Paul Hargreaves: CEO of Cotswold Fayre and Flourish
Listen on Spotify and Apple Podcasts here
Click here to listen to previous ‘Leading by Nature’, episodes.
