Hollie King was “knee-deep in motherhood” in 2018 when her husband lost his job and her young family hit financial hard times. With no regular income coming in, she rolled the dice on her business idea, spending £10,000 on her credit card to market sun cream, made with organic ingredients, that she had been producing at her kitchen table in Frome, Somerset.
As an enthusiast for natural alternatives, King, now 42, started making sun cream for her sons because she didn’t like any of the products on the market. When she sold £600 worth of her own creams on the first day of promoting her products through Facebook advertisements, she realised she was “on to something”.
Since then, her 2018 gamble has paid off: Sweet Bee Organics, whose products now include natural skincare products and herbal remedies, generated revenues of £23 million in 2025 and a pre-tax profit of more than £4 million.
King was born in the US — in St Louis, Missouri — to a mother who was working as an X-ray technician and a father who was a carpenter. Growing up, she explored several career paths — considering becoming a chef, then studying law, and even briefly taking a medical course — before ultimately going to Missouri University in 2001 to study for a degree in finance and economics.
After moving with her university boyfriend to California, she got a job in telecommunications sales. When that relationship ended, she started dating a New Yorker and decided to move there, working her way through various sales positions.
King admitted that she didn’t really like sales though she made good money doing it. But of more enduring value to her were the “amazing” health food shops in New York; that attraction to organic foods would later lead to her interest in using natural ingredients for her sun creams.
By 2010, she had met Dan King, a Welshman who was working in New York. The two married in 2012 and were soon on the move to the UK, where Hollie, still thirsty for new challenges, was offered a job with the consumer software business Zendesk.
The couple opted to buy a property in a village in Somerset so they could live somewhere reasonably close to Dan’s family, where they had their first child, Louis, in 2014. During her year-long maternity leave from Zendesk, Hollie was introduced to a Steiner playgroup nearby in Frome by a midwife neighbour — “It was everything I wanted to give my child: holistic, warm, inviting, organic” — and that experience would influence the couple’s next house move.
King’s wellness products were born when her family’s finances were unwell
BRAD WAKEFIELD FOR THE SUNDAY TIMES
King returned to work remotely before having her second son, Odin, in 2017 and deciding to become a full-time mother. Shortly after, though, her husband lost his job and change was forced upon them. Needing to free up some capital, and attracted to Frome, the couple sold their property and rented another one near the playgroup, the proceeds of the sale at least mitigating the lost income.
It was from the kitchen in this house that she launched Sweet Bee Organics. When sales of the sun cream took off, she launched a second product, Elderberry Elixir, a mix of ingredients such as honey, turmeric and ginger to help with cold and flu symptoms.
But then King’s luck ran out. She was headed on a camping trip when she suddenly started haemorrhaging. She said the hospital told her it was a miscarriage but she thought something else was happening. She saw a gynaecologist privately who found a “massive tumour”. She was diagnosed with an aggressive cervical cancer just days before her 36th birthday.
Her mother flew over from the US to give support, as at the time her marriage had started to crumble, with King divorcing in 2020.
Ask me anythingAdvice for other entrepreneurs … Your heart really has to be in it. It can’t just be about money.Best business tip … Hire people who know more than you do.Your inspiration … my mom.Best decision for the business … Warren Clark joining the company.Motto you live by … Trust your gut.Best way to start the day … jumping on a trampoline.If you could tell me one thing… do what you love
King’s tumour was successfully removed with surgery, but she controversially eschewed radiation and chemotherapy in favour of homeopathic methods.
“It was a very calculated decision,” she said. “I fully believe that the surgery saved my life, along with the alternative methods I used.”
During the eight weeks she spent in bed recovering, she made a promise to herself that she was going to keep expanding the business — and started thinking of ideas for new products.
At the time, she was struggling to get her youngest son to sleep well. After reading that magnesium was helpful for sleep, she tried magnesium sprays but those caused itchiness. So she then tried mixing magnesium oil into the base she used for the sun cream, and her son “relaxed for the first time ever”. King put her Sweet Sleep Magnesium Butter on the website, thinking it would be an “add-on”. It quickly became the company’s main product.
Women going through menopause also discovered the cream and the company started to grow by word of mouth. Soon, King had to move Sweet Bee Organics’ production out of her home and into a space that the company quickly outgrew.
But by this point, King had started selling the magnesium cream to the US, and in 2020, she decided to open a factory in her hometown St Louis to avoid the costs of shipping. The American office now has more than 40 employees, while there are 60 staff in the UK.
In 2023, King met Warren Clark, a lawyer who started to help behind the scenes before leaving his legal practice to join Sweet Bee Organics in the same year. King put further growth at the company down to his advice, which she said helped her “professionalise” and make “really big decisions”. One of those is to raise external capital for the first time — a process the pair are going through at the moment.
King attributed much of the success of Sweet Bee Organics to her ability to “hyper focus”. “If there’s a mission and I believe in it, I’m going to completely immerse myself in it.”
