We won a NatWest Accelerator grant!

We’re still pinching ourselves. After an incredible week running our first John Lewis pop-up in Newcastle, we had another very exciting moment for NinetyOne Jewellery: we pitched our business to the NatWest team - and won a £1,500 grant.

It was a huge moment for us as a mother-daughter jewellery brand, and one that will help us take the next step in growing NinetyOne across the UK.

From John Lewis to pitch day

The timing of the pitch made it feel even more special. Just days before, we had been standing on the shop floor at John Lewis Newcastle, meeting customers, sharing our story, selling out of some of our most-loved pieces and seeing first-hand how people connected with our jewellery.

Then, after a full week in store and two more days of work, we sent a 200-word pitch to the NatWest team.

This is the exact pitch we submitted (which I wrote whilst standing behind our counter in John Lewis!):

Six months ago, my mum and I were making jewellery around a kitchen table in North Yorkshire. Today, we’re running a pop-up inside John Lewis Newcastle.

NinetyOne Jewellery is a mother-daughter business creating premium, colour-inspired jewellery that is hand-finished in Yorkshire using materials sourced from carefully selected ethical and independent suppliers. Since launching our website in November, we’ve been relentlessly focused on growing the business and proving what’s possible with creativity, determination and a lot of hard work.

In the last month alone, we’ve generated coverage in more than 10 regional news outlets, creating a real buzz around the brand. As well as reaching a major milestone with our John Lewis Newcastle pop-up, and the customer response and feedback has been fantastic so far.

Following this success, we’ve been invited to explore additional pop-up opportunities with John Lewis stores across the UK. However, each location requires upfront investment in stock, retail space, marketing and staffing.

This funding would help us secure a future pop-up in Leeds, allowing us to build further sales data, customer insight and momentum towards our goal of becoming a permanent John Lewis online brand.

We’re passionate about showing other women and aspiring entrepreneurs that it’s never too late to build something of your own. We’ve already proven demand. This funding would help us scale a Yorkshire business onto a national stage.

Pitching alongside brilliant businesses

After submitting our pitch, we were shortlisted to the final three and invited to pitch in person.

We pitched alongside two fantastic businesses: Your Menopause Nurse and Resilient Minds Education. Both were absolutely brilliant, and it felt like a real privilege to share the room with founders doing such meaningful and important work.

Standing up and telling the NinetyOne story (in just 60 seconds!) was a really fun challenge. Our business began with the two of us making jewellery around a kitchen table, trying to build something of our own, so to see people respond to it so warmly meant so much!

Winning the £1,500 grant

We were absolutely delighted to win the £1,500 prize.

The money will help us invest in the next stage of our John Lewis pop-up journey, supporting the upfront costs that come with taking NinetyOne into more stores - from stock and display materials to marketing and staffing.

Our next confirmed John Lewis pop-up will be in Leeds in November, and this grant will help us build more sales data, customer insight and momentum as we work towards our bigger goal: becoming a permanent John Lewis online brand.

For a small business, investment like this makes a real difference. It gives us the ability to say yes to opportunities that help us grow, test new locations, reach new customers and keep building the brand in a sustainable way.

The phone call to Mum

One of the most special moments came straight after the announcement.

I rang my mum to tell her we had won - and the whole thing was caught on camera.

Watch it here

It was such a lovely, emotional reminder of what NinetyOne is really about. We’re building something together as mother and daughter. Something that represents creativity, confidence, independence and the belief that it’s never too late to create something of your own. 

What comes next?

The NatWest grant comes at such an exciting time for NinetyOne. After the success of John Lewis Newcastle, we’re now gradually restocking our website, launching more engravable jewellery online, and preparing for our next John Lewis pop-up in Leeds later this year which has just been confirmed this morning! (3 days after winning our pitch money... we don't hang about!) 

We’re also continuing to explore more pop-up opportunities across the UK, with the support of Pop-Up Indie.

Our hope is that each new store helps prove the scalability of our brand, and will hopefully unlock nationwide listings with incredible retailers like John Lewis in the future.

Thank you for supporting us

Winning this grant is a huge milestone, but it is also something we couldn’t have done without the community around us.

Every order, message, review, share, recommendation and word of encouragement has helped us get to this point.

Whether you found us online, visited us at John Lewis Newcastle, came to the pitch, or have simply been cheering us on from afar - thank you.

We are so excited for what comes next, and we’re so glad to have you with us as NinetyOne grows from a Yorkshire kitchen-table business to a brand reaching customers across the UK.