Shepton Mallet Nub News aims to be supportive to every element of the town's community from business and shops to people and charities and clubs and sports organisations.

Everyone is finding it tough at the moment and is desperate to get back to normal.

We are profiling some of these local businesses and groups regularly over coming weeks in a feature called UP CLOSE IN SHEPTON MALLET in the hope that we can be a supportive springboard for their full return to business as usual.

Today we talk to Hannah Bennett of Rainbow Rebel, Shepton Mallet, who shares her thoughts on working in the town and how the coronavirus lockdown has had an impact on her business.

During an in-depth Q and A session she also talks of her love of the local community.

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Tell us how did you come to open in Shepton Mallet and what were the key considerations about moving here?

I moved to Tadley Acres in Shepton Mallet from Wells in 2007 as it was cheaper to buy house wise, and local shops and supermarkets were all within walking distance, which appealled to me. My business came along a few years later.

I began Rainbow Rebel in 2009, soon outgrew my dining room and needed proper office and storage facilities. I looked around at many different places but the units at Haskins in the Anglo Trading Estate were perfect.

The rent is very reasonable, the staff are friendly and it feels safe and secure. I moved house to Priddy in 2017 but have kept my business in Shepton because my unit is perfect for me.

Tell us a bit about your personal business background Hannah and how you ended up running Rainbow Rebel?

I moved to Somerset in 2007 and ended up working on the old Thales site in Wells doing admin. In 2009 I went to the Glastonbury Festival and bought some clothing I call aspirational – I would never fit into them in a million years.

I sold the items on eBay and realised there might be a business in it. I did plenty of research and realised that, at the time, no hippy shop in Glastonbury was selling online and very few retail outlets either in Glastonbury or online sold anything hippy over a size 14 to 16.

Given the average female size in the UK is a 16 that meant half the possible hippy buyers out there were going without. I began approaching UK wholesalers for plus-sized ethically sourced clothing for men and women, and when I struggled to find much I went direct to manufacturers to provide it in the sizes I wanted.

As time has gone on I now travel to India and Nepal annually to meet tailors and suppliers to inspect where my items are made and ensure the staff are paid a fair wage as well as to ensure my clothing is made to my designs and sizes.

While I became self employed in 2009, I carried on working at Thales until the site closed in 2011, when they tried to move me to Basingstoke. A three to four-hour commute daily for a company which ethically was the polar opposite of what I was doing selling Fairtrade clothing didn't sit well with me so I quit.

For a year I worked for the Citizens Advice Bureau in Shepton Mallet but then left and went full time self-employed as my business boomed in 2012.

What do you like about Shepton Mallet? Are you involved in the local community at all, if so how?

I like the size of Shepton Mallet and the unique little shops in the centre. The fact I can walk to the shops or Tesco from my work is a bonus.

I was very sad to see the NatWest close as my business banking has now moved to Frome or online which is frustrating given I work in the festival business and need to pay large sums of cash in on a regular basis.

All my post for online sales goes through Stoke St Michael Post Office as I like to support small local businesses and they have always been friendly and helpful to me and my business. They are family run and really take the time to get to know and help their customers.

I am an active member of Street Sub Aqua Club whose members come from a large catchment including Wells, Shepton, Dean, Woolavington, Cossington and Glastonbury. I was the club secretary for two years until 2019.

For the last 20 years I have been an active caver in the Mendips and for 17 years a member of the Bristol Exploration Club based in Priddy. They have members from all over Somerset and the UK, plus a few abroad too.

I have taken on several committee roles with them and for a few years was the first point of contact for anyone locally approaching the club wanting to try caving.

For three years I did the indoor Tuesday market in Glastonbury but as online sales have increased I stopped this. I would have tried the Mendip markets but could not commit to 50 weeks per year due to summer music festival commitments.

It might be an unfair question but who is your typical customer and what are they usually looking for? How would you describe the business and what makes Rainbow Rebel different?

My customer base is diverse but the majority are wanting good quality ethically-sourced clothing which will last. All the items we stock are machine washable, unlike some similar sellers, and we spend more money ensuring items are made from pre-shrunk natural fibres so they will not shrink or go out of shape with washing.

I am completely against disposable fashion. I find if a customer buys an item and it lasts, they come back again and buy more.

While we stock clothing in sizes eight to 30 for ladies and S-XXXXL in men's, most of our repeat customers are plus sized who often tell us they have struggled to find unique clothing elsewhere to fit.

What other businesses do you like and use in Shepton Mallet?

Since the bank closed the only business we use regularly is Tesco although we still donate to the hospice shop and use the key cutters from time to time. Since moving to Priddy we spend less time in the centre of Shepton.

The lockdown has been very difficult for all types of business. How has it impacted on you and what are your plans and timings?

The lockdown had a massive impact on my business. The cancellation of festivals alone wiped 50 per cent off my annual gross sales.

Then schools shut so I had to home school my eight-year-old son as my husband was busy working. As a result I was forced to close my online sales site for more than three months.

Thankfully there have been government remuneration schemes which have been most welcome and since reopening online last month online sales have been steady. The lockdown also gave me time to get many administrative jobs done including working on a new website which will be launched shortly.

I have also increased my wholesale side of my business and have my designs for sale in a shop in the Gauntlet in Glastonbury.

Do you have any plans to grow the business?

Currently I am working to increase my online presence and move sales away from eBay on to a new website. Also looking to increase wholesale sales.

How do you keep up with changing fashions?

Whilst fashions do change I have always tried to design and stock clothing which is wearable equally well out and about shopping or at a festival. Alternative but not too out there.

Items customers could wear on a dress down Friday to the office or out for a meal the same as expressing themselves at a music event. A result of this is that my items are more saleable in the current climate than those who sell just sequinned spandex and hardcore festival clothing when there are no festivals to attend.

Customers are getting more picky and don't want so much disposable fashion and money is getting tighter. My range of washable and durable clothing stays appealing to all age groups especially in the current economic climate.

Have you and your business won any awards from the industry - can you tell us about those and what they were for?

In 2019 I won Sustainable Trader of the Year at the Glastonbury Festival from a selection of just over 400 other traders. Below is our sustainable policy and what we told Glastonbury we have done to be sustainable.

We strongly believe the best way to operate a business is to be as sustainable environmentally and financially as possible. Here is a list of ways we operate to ensure we can be as sustainable as possible.

• We have always used solar power for all our stall power requirements. This includes lighting (out front, in stall and out back in crew areas), charging crew phones and card machines, fridge and shower. Our solar lighting rig is on the roof of our van and includes two recycled solar panels from Germany which are a combined 360 watts. At the 2019 Glastonbury Festival this was enough to run our stall and two others which had power issues.
• We have never used plastic carrier bags. Instead our shopping bags are made from a combination of recycled paper and cotton, and hand screen printed by a family in India for us on a Fairtrade basis. They are reuseable and biodegradable.
• We have encouraged our suppliers to stop putting our garments in single use plastic bags. Instead our stock is shipped to us in cardboard boxes which are lined in thicker plastic sheeting. This sheeting we reuse as tarps to cover our clothing rails at festivals when it rains.
• We have reduced our stock of woollen items after discovering that most Nepalese wool has a high carbon footprint, having been imported from New Zealand where is it a by-product of the meat industry. Wool items are also harder to wash and not so long lasting with modern washing machines meaning higher waste.
• To offset the carbon footprint from all our stock coming from India and Nepal we used a carbon calculator to work out how many trees we needed to plant to offset our 2019 emissions. We then planted a 1.5 acre orchard in Priddy to offset our carbon. Over the next five years we plan to plant another four acres to further offset our footprint.
• We always pay for our stock in advance of receiving it. We never buy on credit. For the small family businesses who make most of our clothing this often means paying 50 per cent when we place an order so that they can afford to buy the materials. We are making sure our suppliers can operate in a fair and sustainable manner.
• Any cardboard waste from our business is recycled in our 0.5 acre cottage garden (built in lockdown in 2020 partly from reclaimed building waste). We use the cardboard in our compost as brown waste and in our raised beds to aerate the soil which is especially good for potato crops.
• We have recycled the old tyres from our business van, plus more from the garage next door, to create raised beds for growing tomatoes and potatoes.
• We are always happy to share ideas and knowledge on how to operate sustainably with others and to learn ourselves in order to improve and evolve in an ethical way.

Go to Hannah's website:

Check out Hannah's website and work here