Sisters Alicia and Jacinta are on a mission to bring back the magic of childhood. With wonderful memories from their own childhoods of making mud pies, perfumes and potions, and dreaming of magical creatures and make-believe lands, they want children today to experience the joy of magic too. At The Little Potion Co. they have created the most beautiful potion kits and accessories to encourage play based learning and nature play, whilst incorporating mindfulness, visualisation, intention setting and affirmations. Their kits are truly magical! Here, they talk to The Natural Parent Magazine about the inspiration behind their business, how they balance work and family time, and their hopes and dreams for the future.
The Passion: What inspired you to set up your business?
As young sisters we grew up dreaming of fairies, magical lands and mythical creatures, all in a time before mobile phones and iPads. We spent our childhood outside making cubby houses, mud pies and flower perfumes. Magic was a big part of our lives. Kids experience childhood a little differently these days, but they still all LOVE magic. For Christmas 2018, Jacinta’s son William wanted a potion set and when Jacinta couldn’t find anything, she made her own. It was obvious pretty quickly that this was not the last potion kit she would make. William showed it to all his friends and they all wanted one. Alicia jumped onboard, and as it turns out, we’re a pretty good team! Our cumulative skills and experience helped create our unique magical potion kits, which have evolved into something way more wonderful than we ever could have imagined. We saw the potential for these kits to not only be a fun and magical sensory experience, but also to be a more powerful learning tool. A great way of practising mindfulness, we included affirmations and positive phrases in each ‘spell’ to really create the power of positive thinking. Our kits not only help to get our kids outside and off technology, but also help to give them the skills they need to cope with the things they are exposed to online. They truly are magical!
The Launch: How did you start out in the beginning?
We started very small. We launched with 2 kits initially, after about a year of development. We had 10 of each kit for sale, which took us two weeks to sell. We had built up a small following on instagram of friends and others who were along for the ride, watching and waiting while we tested and tweaked and developed our kits. We both had full-time jobs when we started and still to this day work from a studio and garage at home (which we have well and truly grown out of). We are really surprised at just how quickly we have grown from those first few kits!
The Innovation: What was the biggest breakthrough for you with your business?
Our kits are a modern take on potion play. Other brands we found in our research were more antique looking, and although we love Harry Potter as much as the next person, we wanted a product that would appeal to a modern audience and make use of our design skills. Our unique potion stone amulet is an innovation for us and our brand: a way to ‘infuse’ the magic of your potion so that you can keep the magic with you at all times. We are also the first to combine affirmation cards with potion making. Our affirmation cards are a way to really reinforce the magic you are creating from inside yourself.
We do feel like we are still learning every day and that our biggest breakthrough is still to come. We are looking for a warehouse and will hopefully then be able to find ways to quicken our processes and be able to take on more work.
