Tara Button: Testing & Recommending the Best Products That Last
Tara Button
Founder, Buy Me Once · Buy‑It‑For‑Life Expert · Author & Speaker
🏆 Personally vetted 2,000+ long‑lasting products · 8 years of durability research · Featured by BBC Radio, The Sunday Times & Cambridge University
Quick‑Glance Highlights
- Founder & CEO of Buy Me Once – the shop for best products that last
- Author of A Life Less Throwaway
- Regular sustainability expert on BBC Radio
- Guest speaker at Cambridge University & UCL
- Homeware columnist for The Sunday Times / The Times
- Featured in The Guardian and Forbes
- Caitlin Moran calls Buy Me Once “a brilliant idea”
Just an ordinary Tuesday in the lab – yes, the pan survived.
Founding Spark: The Saucepan Moment
In 2013 a pastel‑blue Le Creuset casserole landed in Tara’s kitchen. Its lifetime guarantee lit a bulb: what if everything we bought was built like this? Three years later Buy Me Once launched, hunting durable heroes so customers can buy once, love forever.
From Advertising to Independent Product Testing
A decade of ad‑land storytelling taught Tara how brands nudge impulse buys. She flipped the script, swapped slogans for stress‑tests and watched her idea go viral – winning praise from Ashton Kutcher and Caitlin Moran alike. Her mission was later chronicled in a Forbes feature on founders reshaping retail.
Mission: Finding the Best Long‑Lasting Products
Tara leads a campaign to shift consumer and business culture towards durability, repair and ethical production. Explore our independent durability testing methodology to see how every claim is verified. She also shares insights with researchers at Exeter University’s Centre for Circular Economy, bridging business practice with academic rigour.
Our Failure‑Point Research Edge
What sets Buy Me Once apart? We don’t just hammer pans; we interrogate the reasons why products fail in the wild. First, Tara and her two boisterous boys put every shortlisted brand through day‑to‑day family chaos – anything flimsy is quickly exposed. Next comes the data: we analyse thousands of customer reviews and survey results to map the most common failure points and their severity. Finally, we identify designs and business models that engineer those weak links out – favouring brands with repair programmes, replaceable parts and lifetime guarantees.
A Life Less Throwaway & Mindful Curation
Tara’s bestselling guide reveals how marketing hijacks our wallets and offers a 10‑step process for mindful curation – living happily with fewer, better things.
Media Coverage on the Best‑Product Beat
From debating fast fashion on BBC Radio to lecturing at Cambridge and UCL, Tara’s durability message resonates across airwaves, lecture halls and the pages of The Sunday Times. Mainstream outlets such as The Guardian have run in‑depth interviews, while niche leaders The Minimalists hosted her for a video conversation on mindful consumption.
Why You Can Trust Tara
Every winning brand is personally checked for the quality of their products
Material and build quality, warranty‑check, and real‑life family trials.
Failure‑point analysis
We mine review & survey data to spot the weakest links, then select designs built to avoid them.
Independently Researched
Brands cannot pay for placement on Buy Me Once; if they disappoint, we remove our recommendation.
Beyond the Spreadsheet
Off‑duty you’ll find Tara strumming a ukulele or penning children’s stories – her picture book about a fearless girl with ADHD won the Golden Egg Award in 2024.
Join the Long‑Lasting Revolution
Read the book Browse Buy Me Once Watch on YouTube Follow on X/Twitter Book Tara for speaking
