Buy Women Built (BWB) is a movement and certification mark that helps shoppers find and buy from female founded brands. For British Beauty Week, we brought the movement to life with an activation that put 52 women built beauty brands in the spotlight.

On Industry Day, Monday 12th October, we transformed the blue-tiled bathroom at 60 Great Queen Street into an immersive beauty hall allowing attendees to walk through the space to try products and discover the founders behind the brands.

BWB brands such as Absolute Collagen, St Moriz, Sarah Chapman London and Here We Flo were lit up across the space. Each brand had its own display with three cult products. A B-shaped showcard told visitors the brand’s founding story and spotlighted the name and picture of the woman who built it.

The bathroom caught the eye of the industry’s biggest names. Kate Dearden MP, Minister for the Future of Work, visited the space alongside Millie Kendall OBE and June Sarpong OBE. Online it was just as popular. Our Instagram post reached over 10,000 views and founders across our community shared it on their own channels, taking the bathroom to an even wider audience.

Founded by Sahar Hashemi OBE, the movement brings these brands together under one signature mark that helps customers discover women built brands. It is underpinned by a community that connects founders and helps them amplify each other’s voices. BWB currently has over 1,600 certified female founded consumer brands in the UK. The community is a powerful force with a combined turnover of around £2.4 billion and combined following of 52 million.

Backing women built brands is good for business. BWB’s research with NielsenIQ, The Data Behind She Built This (June 2025), found 30% of shoppers would be more likely to buy a product they knew was founded by a woman. With the Buy Women Built mark this nearly doubled to 62%, and rose to 74% amongst women.

For retailers, BWB campaigns drive sales. BWB brands are growing 10x faster than the total UK FMCG market. Ocado’s dedicated Buy Women Built aisle has delivered an average sales uplift of 20%, with one brand seeing 140%. When Whole Foods Market spotlighted BWB brands for the first time during International Women’s Day in March 2024, customers bought more than 100,000 units and BWB brands unit sales rose by 35% year on year.

The lesson is clear. Visibility matters. So where can shoppers find these brands? Every certified brand is listed on the Buy Women Built online website directory. The licence also means they can use the mark on their packaging. This puts women built brands in front of shoppers online and in-store at the point of purchase. Look out for it on household beauty names such as Dr.PAWPAW, Bramley and Nails Inc. as well as thousands of independent brands.

Together these women inspire the next generation of founders. Every time a shopper sees the mark they see what is possible when a woman builds something she believes in.

So who are the women behind the brands? They are founders who could not find what they needed and built it themselves. And why should customers care? Because every time you choose a women built brand you back her vision and help build the brands of tomorrow. If you believe in women, buy from them.

Women built brands can apply here and retailers and organisations can partner with BWB via our website here.