Venture wants to hear sound of crowd

Mrs Downey, who runs her business from home in Roundhay, Leeds, is looking to raise just under £1,600 by asking members of the public to pledge an amount of money, from as little as £5. In return, instead of a shareholding, they can choose from a range of her products to be delivered to their door. She has so far raised £900.

Bimble makes and sells a range of natural health and well-being products such as creams, herbal teas, tinctures and treatments.

Mrs Downey, who is currently selling her products online, was a RAF navigator for six years before falling down a mountainside in Wales, which led to permanent nerve damage. She began to investigate alternative treatments to manage the pain. “It’s something that you can either sit at home and complain about or you can learn to manage it and turn it into something positive,” she said.

Mrs Downey said she started to study herbalism and aromatherapy through an open college and her products went through testing and certification. Since the firm launched eight weeks ago it has had 60 to 70 customers via the website and around 200 from craft fairs and trade shows.

Her next step is to target independent gift stores, farm shops, beauty salons, health food stores, chemists and complementary therapy practices with her products. “I’ve been able to fund the business so far through savings and cutting back, but the range needs proper retail packaging to compete on the shop shelves and win over the retailers. As there are a lot of products, this will cost a couple of thousand pounds to set up the packaging to meet strict EU labelling requirements.”

To get involved in Mrs Downey’s ‘crowd funding’ project, visit www.bimble.co, which has a link to the Indiegogo campaign on the homepage. This campaign ends 8.30am on Friday, but Mrs Downey plans to continue raising funds independently.