To Maternity & Beyond
Award-winning online baby boutique, Belly Beyond, is expanding as fast as its customers.
Louisa Currie and Heidi Riley often joke that when they’re old, grey and living in the same rest home, they’ll regale the other resident wrinklies with tales of when they made their first million – while showing off matching tattoos of their company logo.
It’s not such a far-fetched scenario. The best friends turned business partners are well on their way to making their first million and already sport inked versions of their company’s abstract, pregnant belly-shaped logo on the back of their shoulders.
Since launching their online baby boutique Belly Beyond on Mother’s Day in 2008, the self-described ‘mumpreneurs’ have continued to astound friends, family, colleagues and themselves with their business aptitude and ingenuity.
Louisa shares her Auckland home with husband Rob and two children, Elliott (5) and Zachary (2). Her friend Heidi lives on a lifestyle block in the Waitakere Ranges with husband Chris and two children Jack (14) and Finn (19 months). The pair first conceived of the idea for the business around the time of Zachary’s birth.
While Louisa’s work background is in fisheries and Heidi’s is in frontline banking and office management, the two wanted to set up a business about which they could both be passionate and which would enable them to balance their work and family commitments – www.bellybeyond.co.nz was the resultant brainchild.
Originally a relatively simple cyber store selling quality gift packs for expectant and new mums, Belly Beyond quickly evolved into a sophisticated, yet user-friendly website stocking more than 500 products for pregnancy, birth and, as they say, beyond.
Louisa and Heidi believe their business’ extensive range of quality products (which they test themselves), good prices (they have regular designer name clearance sales) and the plethora of practical information on their site (backed-up by informative staff) are what distinguish them from similar sites, along with their prolific use of social media.
Clear from the outset that they wanted to create a business that provides excellent products and service, an enjoyable shopping experience and turn a healthy profit, Louisa and Heidi started with a comprehensive business plan.
“Belly Beyond was never going to be a hobby business,” Heidi explains. “We chased the online dream hard from the start. Good management, not luck, has got us where we are today.”
Few would deny they’re now in an enviable position. Belly Beyond has a fast-growing customer base in New Zealand and overseas and achieved an impressive 99.7 percent approval rating in its recent customer survey. Despite the global recession, Louisa and Heidi have continued to meet and often exceed sales targets. In the past year alone, the company has grown by 400 percent.
Their achievements have attracted considerable attention from the business community, which has bestowed them with several major awards. In June this year, they were named ‘Most Inspirational Role Models’ at the well-established Bloom Her Business Awards, in which they were finalists in 2009.
Belly Beyond is also a dual finalist in the upcoming 2010 Waitakere Business Awards (it topped the small business category last year). It also took out the ‘Most Outstanding Fledgling Business’ and ‘Most Inspired Use of Marketing’ trophies at The David Awards 2009 and was highly commended for the ‘Supreme Award’.
The duo believes developing solid systems and sticking to a clear and tight budget have been key to their success. Running an online business from their respective homes has enabled them to keep costs down and Heidi says investing in time-saving technologies has enabled them to deal with rapid growth.
Louisa’s experience with social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter has been a huge asset, enabling them to market their business and communicate with customers worldwide. Belly Beyond’s Facebook page, which has more than 4,000 fans, has become a forum for mums to discuss not only baby products, but also motherhood in general. Facebook fans are also granted exclusive deals and priority access to sale stock; a further incentive to customers to connect with the company.
Enthusiastic about online networking’s possibilities for business people, Louisa, the more tech-savvy of the two, also writes the company’s popular blog and scripts and co-hosts ‘Belly Beyond TV’ on their own YouTube channel, alongside Heidi.
They have proved themselves savvy marketers in the real world as well. In June this year, they teamed up with Australian company Cake Lingerie to bring its ‘Search for Real Mums’ campaign to New Zealand. The month-long search for four Kiwi mums to be the faces, and bellies, of a print ad campaign for the maternity lingerie company in 16 countries, including the UK, US and Japan, attracted the attention of media internationally.
For Louisa and Heidi, the campaign, which featured photographs of the four winners proudly showing off their pregnant bellies, presented an opportunity to promote their business and celebrate changing attitudes surrounding pregnancy and motherhood.
They stress the importance, even (and perhaps especially) with online businesses, of maintaining real-world connections.
“A year into it, we realised we needed to get out from behind the keyboard and meet people,” says Louisa.
“A life online can be very solitary. Email and social media are great, especially when, like us, you do a lot of work outside standard business hours. But it’s not so great for connecting with the local business community, building contacts and refining your pitch.”
Belly Beyond is still in expansion mode. Louisa and Heidi have a clear five-year business plan and Heidi says they’re achieving their stated goals, “even faster than anticipated”.
They cite their solid 10-year friendship as key to their business success, saying it has enabled them to focus on and refine their individual talents.
“We also motivate and compete with each other, which translates into results and a continued passion for our brand,” says Heidi.
Both women relish the freedom that running their own business affords; to be able to set their own schedules. They admit, however, that maintaining a work-life balance is an ongoing challenge.
“We’re still working on that one!” says Louisa. “But securing childcare and having a fantastic support network have been key, as has having extremely supportive husbands.”
www.bellybeyond.co.nz
Top 10 tips for entrepreneurial mums, from entreprenurial mums
1. Get ready while your partner is home in the morning. Make use of that second pair of hands. You’ll feel refreshed and ready to go when they leave for work.
2. Physically leave home each morning to go to ‘work’. Take a walk or jump in your car and go get yourself a good coffee before you start your day, when you walk back in the door turn on your computer.
3. Go mobile and get a wireless laptop and printer. They will give you the freedom to work anywhere, inside and out.
4. Set up a ‘drop box’. Let couriers know you have a designated box for parcels so you aren’t disturbed while attending to the kids.
5. Connect with colleagues via social media. Keep in touch and make new friends. Fellow entrepreneurs will often be online when you are and coping with the same challenges.
6. Eat with the kids. Making a lunch box the night before saves even more time.
7. Turn your phones off or on to ‘silent’ mode at bedtime. Sufficient sleep enables you to be productive the next day. Don’t let anyone interrupt it!
8. Save the kids’ DVDs for when you need to complete urgent tasks. If they consider DVDs a treat, they’re likely to be extra quiet when they watch them.
9. Schedule an outing each day. Fresh air does wonders, even if it’s just a walk to the end of the road and back or a play at the local park. You’ll feel recharged and the kids will have burnt off some steam.
10. Set up a good support network. Encourage visitors – they’ll have one-on-one time with baby and you’ll have a productive hour or two working.
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