Where do nature-based businesses go to find each other?
Woolwich. This week The Feats was at Blue Earth Summit — and it felt like home.
What is Blue Earth Summit?
Three days, 14–16 October, at Woolwich Works in London. More than 7,000 founders, investors, scientists, campaigners and business leaders — all building what Blue Earth calls the future economy: one that delivers wellbeing for everyone, forever.
It's NOT a conference of passive keynotes. Think live debates, trials where the audience votes on the verdict, investor office hours — then saunas, ice baths, group runs and swims between sessions.
For an all-natural foot care brand built for the everyday athlete, it's a natural fit. Our ingredients come from the earth. Our customers do their best living outdoors. Our future depends on those places staying wild.
On stage: Built for the Edge
On Thursday 15 October I joined the Built for the Edge panel on the Courtyard stage. The theme: resilience, adaptation, and what pushing the human body to its limit teaches the rest of us. The company was ridiculous:
- Ruth Osborn — record-breaking freediver. She trains her body to survive where most people can't, and obsesses over details most of us would never notice. Check her Instagram here.
- Jemima Lines — the first British woman in nearly 90 years selected to race in the America's Cup. Elite sailor AND mechanical engineer. Check her Instagram here.
- Alex Shaw — former professional rugby player turned founder of Kickback Coffee. He moderated, and set the thread: extraordinary outcomes are the sum of thousands of small decisions.
Ruth brought the detail. Jemima brought the team. My job? What happens when you take the team away completely.
What I talked about:
- Facing fear alone. I train solo, with a map and compass. Mountain craft is risk management — see it, evaluate it, decide. I told the story of missing a line on Scafell in the wet, ending up on a ledge above a 300-foot drop, and climbing ten feet of glassy rock to get out. No one to call. Without those moments, you don't learn.
- Why wild places need us present. These places are wild because few people go there. Apps make them accessible to people without the experience to be there — more rescues, more crowds, more erosion. If you respect a place enough to earn your way there, you'll fight to keep it wild.
- What's next. The Ramsay Round — the last of the UK's three classic fell rounds, after the Bob Graham and the Paddy Buckley. No flags. No marshals. Next year.
The businesses we met
Off stage, the courtyard was full of brands that only exist because people head outside — and come back wanting to recover. A few we loved:
- Plant One — Carl Rowlinson is a woodland creator, and his No Trees No Seas campaign links what we plant on land to the health of our oceans. Great business. Great human.
- Dryrobe — the original waterproof changing robe, and the reason cold water became a year-round habit.
- IceBreakers — a free, peer-led cold water community for men, with chapters dipping in lakes, rivers and seas from Bristol to Scotland. Cold water, nature and connection. Their line: "We dip as one."
- Rooftop Saunas — London's first rooftop sauna and cold plunge, now in Hackney and Brixton. At Blue Earth they brought a wood-fired sauna to the courtyard.
Different products. Same raw material — the outdoors. That's where The Feats lives: all-natural ingredients, built for feet that move.
We interviewed LOADS of brilliant people (and yes, one of them was the co-founder and COO of Blue Earth Summit itself - big up Linley) at the summit. Head to our Instagram, @wearethefeats, to see them…
The talks
The programme was stacked. Five sessions that stood out:
- Kate Raworth — Economics Under the Big Top. The founder of Doughnut Economics on what an economy looks like when it stops chasing growth for its own sake.
- Deborah Meaden — The Purpose Premium: Does "Sustainable" Actually Pay? The investor asked the question every challenger brand lives with — can doing the right thing compete on price?
- Tim Spector — Good Mood Food: The Gut–Climate–Mind Connection. How what we eat links our health, our heads and the planet.
- Alexandra Cousteau and Hugo Tagholm — Our Ocean's Future. Two of the loudest voices for the sea, on what comes next.
- Sir Ben Okri and guests — Facts Won't Save Us: Why Story Might. Why data alone doesn't change behaviour — and stories do.
That last one stuck with us. It's why we tell stories from the mountains, not just ingredient lists.
Thank you and "we'll be back"
A BIG shout-out to Linley and Will at Blue Earth Summit for building something so special — a place where nature-based businesses, athletes and investors actually talk to each other. And thank you to Ruth, Jemima and Alex for a brilliant conversation.
See you next year, Blue Earth…
Go Get It.
