London - For most new parents, the crippling sleep deprivation, the constant nappy changes and the overwhelming responsibility that a newborn baby brings are challenge enough, yet growing numbers of parents are using these early years to nurture not just a child, but also a fledgling business. There is even a name for the phenomenon, the rise of the “mompreneur”.
On paper, it sounds like the perfect solution to the work versus childcare quandary. Come up with a blistering business idea, develop it from home so you're there to see baby's first steps and kiss cut knees better, then, when baby naps, you make important calls and develop business plans.
The reality, of course, is very different.
“It's not easy,” says Tilly Beazeley, the inventor of the Wean Machine, a nifty product that helps parents prepare fresh, healthy food for tots. “You never switch off and you have to do everything, because there's no-one else.”
Beazeley first had the idea for the Wean Machine when her son was 16 weeks old and weaning, an anxious stage for many new parents, was looming. She then spent several years researching the market, followed by several more designing, tooling and safety testing the product. Today, more than 120 000 units have been sold.
Beazeley says she was lucky to have had fantastic support from her mother and husband. Even so, it was a big change, giving up the trappings of a successful career as a global sales director to start from scratch with little more than a passion for healthy family eating.
“It's another kind of reward,” says Beazeley, “to have the flexibility to be there for the school assembly and the swimming gala.”
This, of course, is the real appeal for many new parents. Katie Mayne, founder of the baby sign language business Tiny Talk, says that many of the moms she knows were desperate to find a family-friendly work solution rather than return to full-time work.
Mayne, a former teacher, found her business evolved from her interest in using sign language to communicate with her young son. “My husband was very cynical, but he was amazed when one day we were late getting Harry's milk and he made the sign for 'milk',” recalls Mayne. “He was just seven months old.”
When fellow moms saw Harry's ability to communicate through signing, they asked Mayne to teach them the technique. This was the genesis of Tiny Talk, with the first classes held in Guildford in Easter 2002. Local press coverage led to an invitation to appear on ITV's This Morning show, at which point Mayne had to seriously think about whether to go nationwide.
“We hadn't even done two terms teaching and I was expecting my second child. It happened so quickly, but it felt like if we didn't do this now, then the chance might not come again.”
Mayne consulted a business adviser and developed a franchising business model. When she appeared on This Morning and plugged the franchising opportunity, the switchboard lit up. “I wouldn't advise giving birth to your second child and launching a nationwide business at the same time,” laughs Mayne, who now has 143 franchises across the UK. “But as a new mom you're tired all the time anyway and used to being up half the night.”
Victoria Percival, also known as the Sling Lady, can certainly relate to Mayne's statement. As a mom-of-three, Percival started making slings to help with the logistics of her own growing family and it evolved into a business via word of mouth. “When the kids go to bed, I fire up the sewing machine,” says Percival. The arrangement might be hard work, but it does save on childcare costs and other hassles.
New moms may be used to hard work, but how do you come up with a compelling business idea when your world is beset by raging hormones and broken nights?
Necessity really is the mother of invention, it seems.
This was certainly the case for Cara Sayer, who designed the SnoozeShade after struggling to get her baby daughter to nap when out and about in the buggy. “I made a really rubbish prototype, but it did give me the rough design of what I wanted to achieve,” she says.
There followed 18 months of development and safety testing before a make-or-break trade show in October 2009 to see whether retailers would like the idea. To her surprise, orders were placed there and then. Now there are a range of SnoozeShade products sold in the UK and abroad.
Mom-of-two Emily Goodall has just had her first encounter with a big name retailer, having launched her product in Asda earlier this month. Bundlebean is a multi-use product for buggies, bike seats and car seats that can also double as an impromptu picnic blanket or change mat. “I got my inspiration four years ago when I had my first child,” says Goodall, a former charity sector events organiser. “I lived up four flights of stairs in a small flat with not much money and I wanted to combat the amount of stuff we seemed to need to be out and about in unpredictable weather. It had to be affordable and it had to bundle up small enough so you could always have it with you.”
The first BundleBean was run up “really badly” by Goodall on the sewing machine, with subsequent versions improved on the basis of feedback from other moms at the school gate. The size of the Asda order took the aspiring inventor by surprise and she is currently waiting for a shipment from China to meet growing demand. Reaching this point hasn't been easy, with friends and family stepping in to help with childcare. Her BlackBerry smartphone is a permanent accessory. “You're never not working,” says Goodall.
Amazingly, many of these moms juggle their fledgling businesses with paid jobs. This was certainly the case for Rachel Jones of Totseat, a funky fabric harness that turns any seat into a high chair. Inspiration struck when Edinburgh-based Jones and her husband grew tired of the poor provision for their baby daughter in many cafés and restaurants. “They never seemed to have high chairs, or if they did they were really grubby and stored near the downstairs loos,” says Jones. After one particularly rubbish dining experience, the couple went home, tore up some old material and Totseat was born.
Of course, the actual process of developing the idea, working through the safety regulations - Jones admits to being “completely neurotic” about safety - and finding a manufacturer took rather longer than making that first prototype, so Jones retained her full-time job in marketing and PR. “You still need to have some money coming in, so I worked on Totseat at night and weekends,” she says.
This was, she admits, “gruelling” but it's testament to her drive and enthusiasm, and the support of her husband, that Totseat made it from the kitchen table to the factory and from there to retailers around the world. “We started off with a batch of 200 Totseats, sold them, made another 200,” says Jones, who gave up PR two years ago in order to devote her full attention to the Totseat. “Now we have sold hundreds of thousands and we're in 45 countries around the world.”
For these accidental entrepreneurs, self-employment has become a route to a flexible work-life balance while pouring their creative energy into fields they care about.
“You couldn't do this if you weren't really passionate about it,” says Mayne. “You need that passion to give you the drive and energy to make it work.”
Budding entrepreneurs, take note. - The Independent