Business Plus Baby

July 30, 2010July 25, 2010

I Started a Business with a Baby: Laura Morris of Rentabuggy

Having had a long career in Insurance I left for a break and whilst looking for another job I fell pregnant with my daughter. I decided I didn’t want to go back to a full time job but I was one of these people that needed some buzz as well as being a full time mum and I can never sit still!

When my daughter was about 18 months old, I met up with a friend for lunch and a bit of shopping and she had a son the same age. Slight problem was she forgot her pushchair. We joked that wouldn’t it be a great idea if there was a place where you could rent one for the day? That comment sat with me for near enough 6 months!

Lying in bed one night I couldn’t stop thinking about it, ideas were flooding out of me and I kept thinking ‘I might of hit on something here’. I got up and wrote down the ideas. Within a week I had built my first website and had my first order and what a buzz!

The company was launched in October 2008 right in the first talks of recession and I did argue with myself whether it was the right time to launch into a new business but I kept coming back to the thought that by providing a service where people could rent a pushchair monthly would help ease families cash flow.

Rentabuggy now provides top selling pushchairs on a monthly basis and we also provide holiday rentals including travel cots, highchairs, sterilisers and more. We cover both services Nationwide and the unique point of the holiday rentals service is we deliver your products direct to your place of stay and then collect them when you have gone taking the stress out of travelling and packing the car trying to squeeze everything in.

Rentabuggy has grown in 18 months and the beauty of spending time with my daughter when I choose is something I would not want to give up now but that doesn’t mean to say it has not been hard work. I can honestly say it is only in the past 18 months that I have retrieved a good work v life balance. I love the fact that I get to see the stages of my daughter growing and we talk daily about work and she knows it brings in money to give her clothes and buy food. I want her to grow up understanding the value of money and how you have to work hard to achieve it but also to see the benefits it can reap in. For example last week I was on a BBC2 programme and I was a judge on a panel, she loved it that her mom was on TV!

Once piece of advice I would give to anyone looking to start a business is go for it. If you don’t you will only wonder ‘what if’. One thing with business is it is a huge learning curve. Don’t worry if you get something wrong, pick up and move on. We only succeed by learning our mistakes.

July 28, 2010July 25, 2010

Top Tips for Managing Your Time as a Mumpreneur

Today, Laura Morris of Rentabuggy gives us her top five time management tips for mumpreneurs. Rentabuggy is a pushchair rental service that you can use if you’re on holiday or just want to try out a buggy for a couple of weeks before you buy. You can find out more about how Laura started Rentabuggy here at Business Plus Baby this Friday 30th July.

When I started my business I was married and even though running a business was tough at least I had two pairs of hands to ease the workload. Now a single mum to my daughter Ashleigh, who will be shortly 4 years old and also now running not only my own business www.rentabuggy.co.uk but co-running another one, has definitely been an insight into a whole new world that has taken a lot of adjustment.

My work day life now revolves around meal times, school runs, piles of washing and various other duties, not including my ever growing workload. Trying to maintain a routine has been tough and if you are a mother yourself as you will know sometimes illness and a variety of other stuff seems to pop up in the middle of an important meeting or deadline! Here are my top tips on managing your time.

I work in blocks of 30 minutes. I have found that if I have sat at the computer all day I seem to not get as much done. Seems silly when put in such context but if you try the ‘30 block trick’ it works a treat as you get a break and your mind has time to be restored and focus. I.e. Breakfast 30 minutes, Phone calls 30 minutes, School Run 30 minutes etc
Every morning when you wake up write a to-do list. Many people keep there to-do list within their head but it is important to write it down. The biggest reason for this is that when you cross items off it you can see the progress you have made and this gives you more motivation.
For a long time I had a massive guilt that as I was not only trying to be a role model for my daughter and earn an income I was also not spending enough time with her. In reality I was but it is a massive guilt every mother seems to carry. My daughter is now old enough to love the fact of helping around the house and by doing this together she knows she is helping mummy but we also get to chat about our day’s and share some time doing stuff together even if trivial.
It is very easy when running a business from home to basically get sucked in and to work all night every night. In all honesty, I am quite a sucker for this but I recently decided that to actually be more effective I needed to switch off some evenings. Again, for the first few nights I sat there racked with guilt (especially after a big bar of Galaxy!) but the next morning I woke up feeling refreshed and more focused. We all need to switch off. Even if you had your own office somewhere, you would have to come home at some point!
I recently was at an event where there was an Inspirational Speaker that I really connected with. She was telling the story that every morning before she switches on the computer she goes for a run. She say’s when she comes back she feels refreshed. She says she sees the time as working as it sets her up for the day. Unfortunately, I don’t get time to run every day but this is something I do 2-3 times a week. It really helps me de-stress. So remember who you are and still keep passion in any hobbies you may have!

‘Time is the coin of your life. It is the only coin you have, and only you can determine how it will be spent’

July 27, 2010September 30, 2013

Running an Online Shop: Pros and Cons

Today I’m introducing my first ever male guest blogger Trevor Ginn of HelloBabyDirect.co.uk! Dadpreneur Trevor is going to give us the basics on running an online shop. It would be great to have a few more blokes around here, so if you’re a dad who started a business to spend more time with your baby or toddler and would like to be featured on Business Plus Baby then drop me a line! Anyway, over to Trevor…

The huge amount of money which parents spend on products for their newborns inspires many parents to think about setting up some sort of baby focused retail businesses. The baby sector is an attractive option for would be entrepreneurs as it has been hardly been touched by the recent downturn. Recession or no recession, people still have babies.

An increasingly popular option is to ignore the traditional brick and mortar shop in favour of selling online. This strategy is in many ways sensible as, while the rest of the retail sector is in the doldrums, online sales are still experiencing double digit year on year growth. Buying online has great advantages for parents in terms of convenience and increased product availability. In addition, the barriers to entry online are much lower than traditional retail. So how easy is it to set up an online baby shop? This post looks at the pros and cons of this business opportunity.

Pros

Easy to start

Sites such as eBay and Amazon make it easy to start selling online. These marketplaces have a huge, international user bases which allow sellers to get off to a flying start. Very limited technical knowledge is required, although a basic understanding of HTML can help to make listings more visually attractive. There are also no set up costs to sell on eBay or Amazon.

For people with more technical know-how, setting up a transactional website is also not as difficult as it used to be and there are lots of solutions available off the shelf at a very low cost or even for free. OS commerce and Magento are popular open source solutions for creating an online shop.

Cheap

An online retailing business can be started on a very limited budget. All that is required is some stock and an online presence on eBay or Amazon or your own website. This is all easily achievable for around £2000-5000.

(Note from Helen: If you want to know how to do it for less than £200, check out How to start an online shop on a budget)

Sales 24-7, worldwide

Unlike a high street shop, sales on the Internet can be made 24-7. The Internet also opens up a business to an international audience. Around 20% of eBay sales are international and the current strength of the Euro makes UK prices attractive to people in the Eurozone, even when additional postage is considered.

Not limited by geography

An online retailing business can be run from any location and an expensive high street location is not required. Many sellers work from home, although this may become difficult as sales grow.

Cons

Admin intensive

Running an online shop is hard work. Creating product listings are time consuming and maintaining the product catalogue is a never ending job. The proposed VAT increase, for example, will mean the retailers must reprice all their products. In addition all sales should be packed and dispatched on a daily basis.

Customer service

There is no getting away from it, customers can be a pain. Being a retailer involves dealing with the general public and so it is important to be patient.

Solitary

Running an online retailing business involves very little face to face customer contact and so can be a little lonely.

High competition, low margins

Let’s face it, the web is where people go to get bargains and consequently competition is fierce. Margins in online retail tend of be lower than on the high street and so retailers need to compensate by selling more.

About the author

Trevor Ginn set up and runs the online nursery shop HelloBabyDirect.co.uk and you can read his blog at www.trevorginn.com

July 26, 2010July 24, 2010

Why is it always about mums?

I began this website because I thought starting a business would give me the flexibility that my job couldn’t. Looking around, I saw lots of other new mums struggling with the same things as me – not wanting to miss their child’s first few years by working full-time, not wanting to spend a fortune on childcare and being disappointed by the part-time jobs on offer. And I wanted to help.

Helping people take back control over their working and family lives has to be a good thing, doesn’t it? For cultural and financial reasons, it tends to be the mum who works part time and manages the family while dad works full-time. But surely we should be moving towards a more equal sharing of these responsibilities? By encouraging mums into business, am I keeping mums in the home and dads in the office?

I hope not, but I do have good reasons if I am. Starting a business and becoming a parent are both tough learning curves. Doing both together is enough to make your head spin. Changing the traditional roles, starting a business and becoming a parent all at the same time is a step too far for most of us! Plus I’m blogging from my personal experience – I would love my husband to work less than full-time and spend more time with our children, but we haven’t found a way to do it yet. When you’re starting out in business and parenthood at the same time it helps if there’s at least one steady income in the family. And it takes time to get a steady income if you’re building up a business.

There are dads out there who have started businesses so that they can see more of their children. A few people (including my brother, in fact) have asked me why I don’t include dads in Business Plus Baby, so I wanted to redress the balance a bit and introduce Dadpreneur Week. The trouble is I haven’t exactly been inundated by guest posts from dadpreneurs! If there are any men out there who have started a business so they can spend time with their babies or toddlers and would like to be guest bloggers, please do send me a message!

You’ll be able to read a post from my one and only dadpreneur guest blogger tomorrow – I hope to feature a few more blokes around here soon!

photo credit: jessica.garro

July 24, 2010August 4, 2010

The Mumpreneur Awards

Winning an award (or just being nominated) can be a great boost to your PR as well as your confidence. Yesterday Laura Rigney told us about The Mumpreneur Conference, today she’s going to talk about The Mumpreneurs Awards, also happening on 18th September at The Heart of England Conference Centre.

The closing date for nominations is 5pm next Friday, 30th July.

Over to Laura…

The Mumpreneur Awards will be a fantastic end to the day at the Heart of England Conference Centre, seeing 8 deserving business mums walk away as winners of one of our 8 categories. With something for everyone to enter, and a quick, free and easy nomination form, nominate yourself today to be in with a chance of winning. The categories are as follows:

– Best Start Up Award – sponsored by Mums The Boss

– Best Online Business – sponsored by Create.net

– Best Business Support

– Best Green Business – sponsored by Yell.com

– Best Saleswoman

– Best Interactive Business

– Most Unique Product

As well as the main award categories, all shortlisted nominees will be in with a chance of winning The Inspirational Business Mum Award, which will be presented to, quite simply, the most inspiring mumpreneur in the UK.

Awards are open for nominations until 30th July 2010, after which a shortlist will be announced. Shortlisted nominees are required to attend The Mumpreneur Conference and Awards, or send a representative. The shortlist will be judged by an independent judging panel to include high profle entrepreneurs such as Rachel Elnaugh and Jo Cameron. Winners will be announced at the event.

This fantastic initiative is in its second year, and with tickets at just £20, you’d be mad to miss it. The ticket price includes entrance to the confernece and awards as well as lunch and a complimentary invitation to a charity event in the evening, the official launch for the Mums Mission calendar. To buy a ticket, submit a nomination or find out more information about the event visit www.themumpreneurconference.co.uk.