Lotus Belle Tent

General information

About Hari

Harriet Seddon was born on midsummers day in Oxford, [UK] 1983 and grew up in the south-west of England. She spent large parts of her childhood camping with her family and with Forest School Camps.

Resonating with the gypsy lifestyle, as a young teenager, she went to live in a tent throughout the summer months. Hari’s mum would often wake her in the mornings from her ‘tent bedroom’ so she wouldn’t be late for school. At 19 Harriet commenced the first year of her design degree where she first drew the initial ideas for the ‘onion dome’ that later became known as the Lotus Belle tent.

“I always wanted to be a tent designer from about 5 years old. I spent my early childhood making camping furniture out of Meccano or bits of wood I found around the place, but I couldn’t work out what qualifications I would need to get a job with one of the big tent companies. I designed the Lotus Belle, but then put it on the backburner for a few years while I had my kids. I thought I should get a ‘sensible job’ and worked as a textiles teacher in a secondary school in Weymouth. My passion for tent making started to creep back into my mind and I found myself encouraging students in my class to design and prototype one-man tents. I decided to bite the bullet, left teaching and showed my designs to a tent manufacturer who imported bell tents. He introduced me to an excellent factory where we made the first Lotus Belle prototype.”

In 2012 Lotus Belle went in to its first year of commercial production.

In August of that year, New Zealander, Jessica Walsh, was working on the UK festival circuit. She came across one of the first models of Lotus Belle at Green Man festival. As a passionate environmentalist, Jessica recognised the potential for the product to combat the throwaway culture associated with nylon tents. Jess became Hari’s first international distributor and quickly grew an impressive social media presence. Following huge success in her native New Zealand Jess went on to head up Lotus Belle Australia and Lotus Belle USA. She now hops hemispheres to catch the summer seasons.

Hari’s partner, Ben Igoe sold his festival production company in 2015 looking to move in a new direction. His experience in sales and marketing, as well as a first hand knowledge of the events industry, gave him a skill set that seemed an excellent fit for the rapidly expanding Lotus Belle. He’s also very strong which comes in handy because Hari is tiny and the tents don’t move themselves!

In 2016 Hari and Ben made the brave decision to start working together as partners in business as well as in love. Ben is now ‘round the clock’ tent lifter, delivery man, child minder, chauffer, cook, domestician, mental health support worker!, spreadsheet ninja, website manager, photographer, social media content creator, salesman and general doer of things.

Hari and Ben live and work together in Bristol with their kids Mani age 10, Lola age 9 and George and Jago age 7. Together they run Lotus Belle UK and oversee the worldwide operation.

Lotus Belle now has licensed distributorships in Canada, USA, Australia, New Zealand, China, Taiwan, South Korea, UK, France and the Netherlands.