Why am I doing this? Why did I leave my well-paid, very easy, flexible job which fitted around my kids to invest all my savings and spend a lot of time taking a punt on something which might not work? The answer to this question has really helped me focus and made me realise how important this is to my business.
In terms of personal reasons why, mums often say that they are starting a business for their kids — to show their kids that you can do anything you dream of. But that doesn’t resonate for me. I’m under no illusion that my three year old would much rather I was playing with him right now rather than writing this. Sure, he might be happy for me in twenty years, but I’m doing this for me. I love learning and stretching myself — something I’ve been missing in maternity leave. But I didn’t start a business just to challenge myself, my passion for a more sustainable future is at the core of this.
What resonates with me most is making it easy for busy parents to be environmentally friendly. There is so much pressure to be a good mum, and if you’re passionate about the planet, you can feel so guilty if you end up buying cheap baby clothes just because you don’t have the energy to find them second hand or the budget to buy new organic clothes. I am/was that mum just trying to do my best but feeling like I’m failing in many areas. I want to give tired parents an easy win. That’s why.
This was reinforced yesterday when I went to my first mum2mum market as Borro. Full of parents with one or more crying/bored children attached, these were not customers who had time to stand and chat for long, but the response I got was overwhelmingly positive. When they saw the business was eco-friendly I think they thought this was another thing they were ‘supposed’ to be doing to save the planet, like cloth nappies. But most were really surprised when I described free returns, no charge for staining etc at how easy it was. In fact one mum said ‘I can imagine a future where this is the norm — how great would that be?’
