Thirty billion. That is the number of single-use items Supreme Creations estimates it has helped remove from the world’s supply chains – one reusable bag, one branded cup, one reusable face mask at a time. The business behind that figure is a B2B manufacturer most consumers have never heard of, run out of London with a factory in South India, supplying everyone from Dior to a church that needed tea towels for an event. In May, its Chief Executive, Smruti Sriram OBE, won the 2026 Veuve Clicquot Bold Woman Award telling me: “It is unbelievable, actually.”
Supreme Creations was founded in 1999 by Smruti’s father, Dr R. Sri Ram, who had spent his career trading natural fibres – like jute and cotton – for the carpet and home interiors industry. He understood the base material for sustainable packaging before most businesses understood the need for it so when Tesco and the Co-operative Group came looking for a reusable alternative to the single-use carrier bag in the early 2000s, he was the man who could deliver it. He built a unit in Wales to get started, then constructed a factory in Pondicherry, on the south-east coast of India, to handle the volumes that followed.
“I don’t have a background in fashion, I don’t have a background in textiles, I don’t have a background in agency or advertising. But I just had an innate interest in working with cool, interesting, fashion-y kinds of brands.”
That factory is now one of the most notable elements of the business. Of its 800 plus strong workforce, around 80 per cent are women – drawn initially from the local community through regional television advertising when large supermarket orders needed filling fast. What began as a pragmatic recruitment decision became something more significant. “When you give a woman a sense of financial independence,” Smruti says, “and she’s sitting on a stitching line with her friends around her, sharing stories about her family – that’s the atmosphere. If you go to the factory, it’s a great, great atmosphere.” The factory has water treatment facilities, active tree-planting programmes, and receives delegations from around the world who come to see what true teamwork looks like in a workforce.
Community had always been part of Smruti’s instinct – at 18 she had helped launch the Wings of Hope Achievement Award, a programme that now runs across more than 400 schools and has reached over 40,000 students in the UK, India, and Malawi. She worked on this with her mother Rajni, who was the picture of calm and pride when I met at the Veuve Clicquot awards ceremony. Smruti tells me: “My mother brings strength, clarity, and a great sixth sense on lots of things. She’s got at true sense of purpose and runs The Wings of Hope with care for each and every student, teacher and parent. I admire her so much, and she’s the true star of the family enterprise and charity.”
Then, in 2008, Smruti joined the family business without a title, working somewhere in the vicinity of the sales team, learning the business by moving through it. What she brought was an instinct for brands that the business had not yet fully followed. Topshop gave her the opening – store launches, London Fashion Week activations, collaborations with Kate Moss and Christopher Kane – and she went after more. “I don’t have a background in fashion, I don’t have a background in textiles, I don’t have a background in agency or advertising,” she says. “But I just had an innate interest in working with cool, interesting, fashion-y kinds of brands. And that was the pivot.”
That pivot reshaped what Supreme Creations is. The business now supplies Dior, the Royal Collection Trust, the Louvre, and British Airways alongside Pret a Manger, emerging startups, and most things in between. “Think of us as the Intel inside,” Smruti says. “Every computer has the chip – that’s the mark of excellence, and people choose that computer because of that brand. That’s how we see ourselves.” But the business itself is built on more than that, with its ethics running through the heart of it.
Smruti can recite the hierarchy that the company lives by without pausing. She told me: not using anything is best; reuse second; recycling third; disposal last. Everything Supreme Creations makes sits at level two. Bags of Ethics is the label that makes this legible to the outside world – the collaborations, the charity campaigns, the public-facing work that gives the manufacturer an identity beyond its order book. During the pandemic it became the number-one Which?-accredited reusable face covering brand in the UK, raising over £1 million for charity in partnership with the British Fashion Council. It has since helped plant 3.75 million trees for the Queen’s Green Canopy initiative and also oversaw the upcycling of eight tonnes of British Airways uniforms at the Pondicherry factory. B Corp certification followed in 2025.
“Every computer has the chip – that’s the mark of excellence, and people choose that computer because of that brand. That’s how we see ourselves.”
When our conversation turns to sustainability, Smruti tells me: “There’s a lot of green hushing that happens. And the great thing about being a B2B player is that we get to know about projects well in advance of what hits consumers – which means we get the privilege of speaking to a variety of people within a business around design, sustainability, product development.”
The business has been making the case for reuse since before most of its current clients had a sustainability team, and it has found that the most effective route to changing consumer behaviour is not through obligation but through design. The face mask campaign worked because people wanted it – it was affordable, stylish, and effective. With its success, Supreme Creations is looking to grow. A plant-based leather material is in development, currently under patent while the travel and luxury sector which is full of places that have historically resisted reusable products most stubbornly has become a growing focus, because Smruti’s read is that the resistance there is beginning to shift.
Her father remains Chair, and from him Smruti absorbed the operational discipline of the business. “He’s a wonderful mentor,” she says. “And as my responsibilities have grown and grown and grown, I have matured, but I still feel like I learn so much on a daily basis.” Although Supreme Creations has a senior team across the UK and India that are not part of the family, the dynamic between father and daughter remains central to how the business is run.
Nearly two decades in, and Smruti is unambiguous about what she wants next: commercial success at scale, without compromising the values the business was built on. “I really believe that the people within our business and the innovation we do is not replicable,” she says. “Obviously I want huge commercial success – but never at the cost of losing the values of the business.” Ask her how it feels to still be here after eighteen years and the strategic register drops entirely. “I honestly cannot believe I’ve done this for 18 years,” she says. “I still feel super fresh. I’m so excited to do this work every day.” And, with this mindset and enthusiasm, it seems that she’ll likely still be growing the business for another 18 years to come.
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Quickfire Questions
What book would you recommend right now?
Values by Mark Carney. I’d recommend it to anyone trying to understand how we reconnect commerce with conscience.
What’s a film you could watch on repeat?
The Sound of Music. Or Mary Poppins. I just can’t deal with anything too dark – life has enough of that.
Who are your role models and mentors?
The values really start from my family. Beyond that, I genuinely admire a lot of businesswomen and men, for different reasons. They don’t directly mentor me, but just sitting near good leaders, observing how they operate – that’s where I learn. It doesn’t have to be a CEO. I’ll watch anyone who does something well.
What would you like your legacy to be?
My grandmother died recently – at 95 – and I put Community Champion on her death certificate. Everyone who met her had a story about what she did for them. That feels closer to the right answer than anything I could say about myself when it comes to my legacy.
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