Inside Stennah & Hope's B Corp Journey: Learning Through The Process

When we last spoke with Stennah & Hope founder Boyowa Olugbo, he described an ambition that extended beyond growth, sales or accreditation.

He wanted to build the kind of manufacturer that other businesses aspire to work with.

Having been selected as the recipient of Portobello Business Centre's fully funded B Corp certification support package, the South East London fragrance manufacturer was preparing to begin a process that would place every aspect of the business under the microscope, from environmental impact and governance to workplace culture and long-term accountability.

At the time, much of the conversation centred around why the company wanted to pursue certification in the first place. For Boyowa, the motivation was never simply about obtaining another accreditation. Instead, it was about formally recognising values that had already shaped the business for years and creating a framework that would help those values continue to grow.

Several months into the process, that work is now well underway.

While customers are unlikely to notice dramatic changes overnight, behind the scenes Stennah & Hope has been dedicating time each week to reviewing policies, documenting processes and building a clearer picture of how the business operates on a day-to-day basis. Alongside support from purpose-led consultancy transformacy, the company has already completed a number of key pieces of work, including a stakeholder grievance procedure, an environmental tracking system and an updated employee handbook.

Yet when reflecting on the progress made so far, Boyowa is less focused on the documents themselves and more interested in what the process is beginning to reveal. One of the key principles behind B Corp certification is understanding impact. While the assessment examines areas such as governance, environmental responsibility and workplace culture, it also encourages businesses to take a closer look at how they operate and measure aspects of their organisation that may previously have gone unnoticed.

For Stennah & Hope, that has led to some unexpected insights.

"It's been good to see how much energy we use on a daily basis," Boyowa explains. "We've never bothered to track that before."

It may seem like a small observation, but it reflects one of the wider benefits of the certification process. Beyond demonstrating responsible practices, B Corp encourages organisations to understand their impact in greater detail and ask questions that may never have arisen otherwise.

For Stennah & Hope, that has meant looking at familiar operations through a different lens and developing a deeper understanding of how the business functions day to day. So far, Boyowa says the experience has been less daunting than some might expect. Having worked with several B Corp-certified brands over the years, the company already had a sense of the commitment required and the standards organisations are expected to meet.

"We have so many of our brands that are B Corp and we know how challenging it was for them," he says. "So we are ready for what comes."

That does not mean challenges do not exist.

In many ways, one of the purposes of the assessment is to identify areas where businesses have less visibility and encourage them to explore their impact more thoroughly. As the process progresses, waste management is emerging as one area requiring particular attention.

Like many manufacturers, Stennah & Hope can monitor its own operations closely. Gaining a complete picture of what happens once waste leaves the site, however, is considerably more difficult.

"There will be some challenges," Boyowa explains. "Waste auditing will be a challenge as we don't have control of how and when the waste gets collected."

Rather than viewing this as an obstacle, he sees it as part of the wider learning process. Understanding where gaps exist and identifying opportunities for improvement is, after all, one of the reasons many organisations choose to undertake certification in the first place.

Yet while much of the work so far has focused on systems, policies and measurement, the process is also reinforcing something deeper.

Perhaps the most significant development has been the way the journey continues to strengthen Boyowa's long-term vision for the business. While certification itself remains an important goal, his focus increasingly centres on what kind of organisation Stennah & Hope can become as a result of the process.

"We want to be the manufacturer other businesses aspire to," he says.

It is an ambitious statement, but one that sits naturally alongside the philosophy that has guided the company since its earliest days. Throughout our previous conversation, Boyowa repeatedly returned to ideas of quality, responsibility and long-term thinking. Several months later, those same principles continue to shape the way he approaches both certification and business growth.

That ambition also extends beyond environmental targets, governance frameworks and assessment scores.

As the certification journey progresses, Boyowa believes some of the most important outcomes may be cultural rather than operational. For him, success is not simply about meeting a standard. It is about ensuring the values behind the business are understood, shared and genuinely embraced by the people around him.

"I want our mission statement to be one where the whole team believes in," he says. "Not one that is made to tick a box."

For many businesses, B Corp certification represents a destination.

For Stennah & Hope, it is increasingly becoming something else: an opportunity to strengthen the foundations of the organisation, embed its values more deeply and create a business that continues to reflect those principles long into the future. As the journey continues, there is still work ahead. More documentation will need to be completed, new systems will need to be embedded and further evidence will need to be gathered. Yet the early signs suggest the process is already having an impact, not simply on how the business is measured, but on how it understands itself. And for Boyowa, that may ultimately prove just as valuable as the certification itself.