Karen Lynch, chief executive of Belu, said that her company, which sells sustainable mineral water and gives all of its profits to charity via WaterAid, had not used the term "social enterprise" for two years, in a speech at the Social Enterprise Exchange in Glasgow.
Lynch told delegates – at a session called How can social enterprise grow?– that they should ask themselves if being a social enterprise is limiting their thinking.
She urged them to be self-critical, and said: "You need to be competitive. Challenge yourself, ask yourself where you can't compete."
Lynch said that if their social enterprise needed customers, they had to know their market and that they had to be both different and better.
Belu was competing with corporates, she said, and the company had realised that it needed to compete on beauty as well as ethics. She said that "ethical can be beautiful" and urged social enterprises to understand that "you don't need to be wrapped in brown paper and twine."
Lynch also argued that social enterprises had to ask themselves whether they had the right skills and experience to succeed, and added that as a result of focusing on hiring the right people and choosing the right sales agency, Belu was now financially self-sustaining.
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