Elaine Sagar has built a fast-growing early years business, supporting around 180 children a day across two nurseries in Greater Manchester.
The founder and CEO of Sunflower Childcare Group says one setting cares for roughly 70 children and the other around 110 – with 67 staff employed across the nurseries.
Alongside this, Sagar has begun moving into residential care, with a children’s home team of seven in place as she explores growth beyond early years.
She’s clear, though, that her job isn’t to run rooms day-to-day.
“My role is I go in once a week, and I meet and I direct my senior leadership team,” she tells BusinessCloud.
“My ops director runs a lot of the day-to-day for me.”
From hairdressing to childcare
Sagar doesn’t present herself as a typical childcare founder.
“I’m basically a hairdresser,” she says, explaining that she has experience lecturing on hairdressing rather than early years.
She describes three phases that shaped the way she now leads Sunflower: entrepreneurship and teaching in hairdressing; international auditing work assessing quality in hospitality; and education and childcare.
She explains: “The skills that I’ve got from those three areas have come together to make me what I am now really.”
The personal driver
Sagar first became involved in education in 2008 through her son’s independent school, which went into receivership.
She bought it out with a partner who owned the building – then quickly realised their intentions didn’t align.
After later buying herself out of the partnership, a major personal event became her motivation.
“I lost my son in 2010 when he was in an accident,” she says.
“He was 17 and just about to go to university. That is my driving force.
“I want every child to have the same start that my boys have had.”
Sunflower was founded in 2014 with that mission at its core.
Business growth
Sunflower’s first nursery came from deliberate planning around local demand. After that, growth was more opportunistic.
One setting was offered after a local authority approached Sagar about taking it on as a not-for-profit, while another came through helping operators launch a nursery, only for them to decide quickly it wasn’t for them.
Funding has come through a combination of reinvestment and borrowing.
The group once had four nurseries but has now consciously dropped to two.
It is operating centres that have waiting lists to 2028 and is turning over £2.5 million each year.
Investment in leadership
Sagar believes childcare is too high-stakes to run lean at the top.
She says she intentionally keeps “double” the senior leadership capacity she technically needs.
“That’s a conscious choice – quality is that important,” she says.
Residents of nursing home visit Sunflower Childcare Group
She also frames stepping back as a way to empower her team.
“I literally made myself redundant, really. I want to empower them,” she continues.
“I’m the first to admit I’ve surrounded myself with people that are 100% better than me in that field.
“The money’s followed, but quality comes first.
“If you work hard on your quality and get that side right, the money will follow.”
Community
The business, and its founder, is also proud of its community-based model.
“Our community is the strength for us, and that is something that we’re really passionate about,” Sagar explains.
“We distribute 400kg of fruit and veg every Tuesday.
“We have a fresh fruit and veg stand outside our nursery that they help themselves to.
“No other business in the industry that I know of does that.
“These are incentives my staff have come up with. We’re about an emotive, caring community.”
ASCEND
Sagar joined GM Business Growth Hub’s ASCEND Scale Up Programme with the idea of expanding into children’s residential care.
She says her initial ambition was building “five homes in five years”, supported by a mix of organic funding and fundraising capacity.
But delays in navigating Ofsted processes for a children’s home changed her thinking.
“I’m on ASCEND now to learn like everybody else and that’s been great,” she says.
“I’ve also realised through ASCEND that the next step for me is more of paying it forward and giving it back.
“My main driver is still making sure that families get what they need and that children get the best start in life.”
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