I want to start with something nobody tells you about B Corp certification: it will make you question everything. Not in a crisis-of-confidence way. In a this-is-harder-than-I-expected-and-also-somehow-exactly-what-I-needed way.
So here it is. The honest, unglamorous, genuinely brilliant story of how Bombaby became B Corp certified.
It started long before it started
I didn't set out to build a sustainable business. I set out to build a good one. There's a difference, and I think it matters.
After twenty years in education (teaching English literature, working in welfare and safeguarding, caring about people as a professional default) I left to build Bombaby. And the values I'd carried in every classroom came with me. The idea that you look after your team. That you make decisions based on what's right, not just what's profitable. That the people you work with are not a line on a spreadsheet.
Sustainability wasn't a strategy. It was just the way I did things. The Jaipur team were paid properly from day one. Packaging was natural from day one. Azo free dyes; plastic free clothing. We grafted hard to switch to GOTS certified cotton because I couldn't stomach the alternative. I grew up in the Rutland countryside. I care about this planet. It really is that simple.
B Corp, when I found it, felt like someone had put a name to everything I already believed.
Then I actually started the process
The B Impact Assessment is no joke. I want to be very clear about that.
It is hundreds of questions. Across governance, workers, community, environment, and customers. It asks for evidence of everything. Not just 'do you do this?' but 'can you prove it, document it, and demonstrate it meets a measurable standard?' It is rigorous in a way that is, frankly, brilliant - and also, at times, completely overwhelming for a founder running a business largely on her own.
The admin alone took months. Pulling together policies, payslips, supplier audits, environmental data. There were moments - genuinely - where I sat at my (very messy) desk and thought: is this actually worth it? We're already doing all of this. Why do I need to spend this much time proving it?
The answer, I eventually understood, is that the proof is the point. Anyone can say the right things. B Corp asks you to show the receipts.
Enter Laura: the quiet hero of this whole story
I need to talk about Laura Slack.
I found Laura when I was in the early stages of understanding just what B Corp was all about But I knew it was for us. She is a ‘pepper’ B Corp consultant - one of the best - and what she brought to this wasn't just expertise. It was genuine belief in Bombaby. That matters more than people realise.
While I spent most of the process stressed and second-guessing myself, Laura was the one holding everything together. She compiled the reports. She chased the evidence. She pushed when I felt frazzled. And at the eleventh hour - when we were scrambling to photograph the local area around Sanganeer to contextualise the poverty levels there, and therefore evidence why our wages were comparatively significant - she was on it. Late at night. Without complaint. Just: on it.
She will remain a friend for life. B Corp does that, I think. It's much bigger than any of us.
Laura told me something afterwards that I keep coming back to. She said she had never come across a business quite like Bombaby before. And that reading our Jaipur notes (the documentation of our relationship with the team, our commitment to them, the detail of how we work) made her tearful. I'm not sharing that to be boastful. I'm sharing it because it confirmed what I've always felt: that what we have built in Jaipur (and Rutland) is something genuinely rare. And it deserved to be seen.
The living wage: the bit that almost cost us everything.
Here's where I'm going to be completely transparent. Because this is the real side of things and I think it's important.
We were on track for 95 points. We lost nearly 15 of them: almost entirely because of the living wage question for our Jaipur team.
B Corp requires you to demonstrate that your workers earn a living wage. For a team based in Rajasthan, that sounds straightforward enough. It wasn't. There is no Anker Methodology benchmark for the region. No accepted, recognised document we could point to and say: here. This is the standard. We meet it.
Without that accepted evidence, the points simply couldn't be awarded. It didn't matter that we knew - genuinely, completely, without a shadow of a doubt - that our team are paid well above anything the local area would expect. B Corp isn't about what you know. It's about what you can prove, with documentation that meets a specific standard.
So we nudged through on 80.7 points. Close to the minimum to certify. And part of me - a not-insignificant part - hated that. I wanted flying colours. I wanted the score to reflect everything we had done and everything we are. And it didn't. Not fully.
But here's what I've made my peace with: this isn't about ego. It never was. The score reflects the evidence we could provide at that point in time, within a framework that is rigorous precisely because it has to be. The fact that there is no benchmark for Rajasthan is a gap in the system; not a gap in us. And we'll keep pushing on it. We’ll be ready for 2029.
For now: we're certified. We're proud. And the Jaipur team are still paid exactly as well as they always were, whether a points system can quantify it or not.
The moment we found out
I'm not going to pretend I didn't cry. I absolutely cried.
Not because we'd changed anything to get there. Not because we'd overhauled our practices or made promises we didn't know how to keep. But because someone had looked at everything we'd quietly been doing - for years, without fanfare - and said: yes. This counts. This is what it looks like.
That validation meant more than I expected it to.
What I'd tell any small brand thinking about it
Do it. But go in with your eyes open.
Find yourself a Laura. Genuinely: do not attempt this alone. Not because you can't, but because the process deserves someone in your corner who believes in what you're building. It makes all the difference.
Be prepared to not get the score you think you deserve. That's not failure. That's the framework being honest with you about what it can and cannot measure. Keep the receipts. Keep improving. Come back stronger next time.
And know that the process itself - the months of admin, the late nights, the evidence-gathering, the moments of complete overwhelm - will clarify you in ways you didn't expect. It will make you articulate, in precise and accountable terms, exactly who you are and what you stand for.
For Bombaby, B Corp certification isn't a badge we wear. It's a mirror we hold up. And we like what we see.
Sarah
Founder & Rebel Boss, Bombaby
Need help? Find the brilliant Laura Slack HERE.
