Last month The Hip infant was fortunate enough to have Fairfax do a profile on us for their business section in both the Sun-Herald and The Age. If you are struggling to read the full article above the head over to Essential Baby for the full story.
The article has generated much excitment, many emails and a zillion questions which is great. See below a few of my fave questions:
Did you reeeaaaallly start The Hip Infant with a credit card? I sure did, $12000.00 and many sleepless nights saw the conception of the Hip Infant. My husband is a software developer which helped enormously not only with things like general IT lingo but helped me in avoiding many costly mistakes which could of very well occurred given my lack of IT experience. I had assumed that a passion for surfing the net was enough to get started I was very wrong!
What did you do prior to The Hip Infant? it seems like a million years ago, my career started as a Paediatric nurse which I loved! however my first baby born in 1998, 10 weeks early and we experienced quite a ‘hell’ ride with him in hospital for 6 weeks and the usual preemie problems. I decided at this time the whole working with sick children was just too emotional and not for me now that I was a mother. Twelve months later I began working as a freelance set nurse and medical adviser on Tv & films a great job but soon after, number two son was on his way and the hours were just not compatible for a mum of two children. So it was from there that The Hip Infant was conceived.
You said in the article that you saw a gap in the market for hip baby goods, do you still think there is a gap? ha ha certainly not, online baby stores have become the new black!The range of products for babies these days is just amazing. Even in the last 10 years since my first arrived I have seen huge changes, I cringe at the things I used to dress him in but really the options were just so limited at the time. I think I need to change that gap in the market its just too cliche these days…shall have to think of something else.
How do you run a business with four children? if I had a dollar for every time I was asked this question i would be a seriously rich woman! so how do i do it? in all honesty its a huge juggle, it goes without saying that my children are my priority but the reality is they are the reason I am doing this so I could be a stay at home mother. My vision for what it would be like and the reality have turned out to be two very different things.
You cannot have a successful business and only work every now and then, having my own business has been 10 times if not more the work than I thought it would be. There have been times when the children have been asked to give me 5 minutes while I write an email or be quite when I am on an important phone call. Saying that I do class reading, I am at home every morning and afternoon, I go to playgroup, I taxi them around to sports and friends and I am there for them all the time…the downside you have to make up the hours somewhere so I am awake all night arrrgggg!
That’s it for now…I shall update with more questions in the next week or so, meantime if you have any feel free to email me mel@thehipinfant.com.au
Just when you thought we got of our soap box here we go again! If by now you have not heard about the BPA issue please read earlier in our blog or give it a google, generally its a good read and very informative.
