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- 🚀 Your Weekly Slice of UK Consumer Startups #32
🚀 Your Weekly Slice of UK Consumer Startups #32
Forget going viral. This is how you build a brand people actually love 👀
The Startup Slice
December 07, 2025 • Estimated Reading Time: 8 minutes
Hey 👋
This week we saw a £7.5M raise, a whole new pre-alcohol ritual land a national listing, and a major acquisition that signals big things for challenger brands.
For our Bitesize Playbook, we sat down with Mia Skelson, Seep’s Social and Community Manager. Her LinkedIn speed-dating series for social media managers began as a spontaneous post and took off instantly.
Let’s get into it.
📱 From the Feed
 Priya Pankhania, Co-Founder @ PrePear | 🍲 Borough Broth raises £7.5M: The organic broth brand secured £7.5M from Piper to scale production, open a new West London site and expand into soups, stocks and gravies. Now in Tesco, Sainsbury’s, Waitrose and Ocado and hitting £11M revenue, they’re forecasting £20M by 2026. 🍐 PrePear lands in Ocado: Korean pear power has officially hit national retail. PrePear launches on Ocado as UK’s first pre alcohol ritual drink. From wedding test batches to grocery shelves, huge move for an untapped space. |
👀 ICYMI: Brand Moves Worth Watching
 Jamie Laing + Edward Sweet-William, Co-founders of Candy Kittens | 🍬 Candy Kittens acquires Graze: A huge moment in snacking as two category heavyweights join forces. Wild to think that years ago CK would have loved to be acquired by Unilever and today they’re acquiring one of its brands. A clear sign of where the new wave of the future of consumer is going. ☕️ Sugar tax panic? Rodd’s is unbothered: The new levy hits iced lattes and brands are scrambling. Rodd’s isn’t. They never added sugar to begin with, so while the industry pivots, they keep pouring. Great post. |
💡 Bitesize Playbook
We’ve had our eye on Seep since they aired on Dragon’s Den. As Social and Community Manager, Mia doing the job of an entire department, from content to partnerships to building one of the most engaged eco communities out there. Her LinkedIn speed dating series began as a spontaneous post and ended up exploding. And her biggest takeaway? Community > virality, every single time. Let’s get into the chat.
Seep turns 5!
What is Seep and how did it all start?
Seep is a 100% plastic free cleaning essentials brand. We make the tools people use daily such as sponges, cloths, bin liners, and much more. Our founder Laura started the brand after realising there were eco options for sprays or disinfectants but not for the tools themselves. The well-known green and yellow sponge is actually packed with plastic and sheds billions of microplastics with every use.
Laura knew there needed to be an alternative, and so our eco sponge came about and is still our hero product today, with over 1.5 million sold. We’re on a mission to eliminate microplastics from 1 million homes by 2030!
How did you encourage consumers to actually shop right during Black Friday without losing their minds or their morals?
No one can be perfectly sustainable and I think it helps to accept that. What we can do is make smaller choices that last longer and have a lighter impact. I always encourage people to buy things that are genuinely useful, well made and made from materials they can recycle or compost. Clothing is a good example because you can choose pieces that last much longer. The same applies to cleaning tools. Small swaps add up and you can still shop mindfully without feeling overwhelmed by all the information out there.
What's your secret to getting people to care about sponges and sustainability at the same time?
It's definitely not the easiest category, so we focus strongly on education and relatability. Everyone recognises the green and yellow sponge, so showing how it is made and how many microplastics it sheds helps people understand the problem. We try to speak to two groups. The first is the eco focused shopper who already cares. The second is the person who wants to be eco but worries the product will not work well. Our aim is to show that our sponges are both sustainable and genuinely effective, with a clear end of life story too.
What is the most common misconception you hear about microplastics?
The biggest misconception is that microplastics are exaggerated or not real. Many people do not understand the health risks because there is still limited research and the findings often say we need more data. That gap in knowledge makes it easy for people to dismiss the issue. Awareness is growing though. The ZOE podcast recently did a full episode and there are reports of BBC Panorama covering it. Once people realise microplastics can affect the body as well as the planet, I think the conversation will shift very quickly.
What's next for Seep?
We're continuing to disrupt the cleaning category and working on new innovation for next year. The goal is to make it even easier for people to switch to eco products without feeling they are giving up performance or convenience. We want to keep expanding the range in a way that feels genuinely useful and that pushes the category forward. There are exciting things coming and we're looking forward to encouraging even more households to make simple sustainable swaps.
Seep on display
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