Firm believers that the greatest gift we can give our children is spending time together, Together Time founders Kylie and Sara set out to help parents create special moments with their little ones. Appreciating how busy life can be, they wanted to make it easy for families to use their precious time together to make happy memories. Their creative activity boxes are lovingly crafted to bring people together, and contain fun activities designed by experienced teachers and trialled by Kiwi kids! Their beautiful vision is to enhance the quality time you have with the precious children in your lives.
The passion: What inspired you to set up your business?
My business partner Sara and I created this business together from different channels of inspiration.
Inspiration for Kylie: Spending quality time with my children was the biggest drive. When I went back to work full time after having my daughter, life was so busy. I wanted to plan exciting and fun activities to do with her that engaged us both, but I never seemed to have the time. Once I had my son, quality one-on-one time with my daughter was even more important and was captured during my son’s nap times. That’s when I realised how beneficial it would be to have ready-to-go activities at your fingertips, no fuss or organising, just fun spending time together with your children.
Inspiration for Sara: The joy of creating has always inspired me. Science and teaching are my educational background. As my family grew, I loved to fill our holidays full of activities that drew out laughter and wonder in my children. I spent many hours dreaming up adventures that inspired my three children to look at the world with eyes full of wonder and joy as they created, calculated and learnt. When Kylie first talked to me about her brilliant idea, I had a vision of all those activities boxed up ready to unleash joy in our customers’ lives.
The launch: How did you start out in the beginning?
Sara and I discussed ideas for a long time in snatched conversations within our busy lives. When we had the opportunity, we started trialing out different activities – just playing and having fun. It took a few months before we really considered this was more than just a passion project. There were a lot of fails to begin with! After 3 months of designing and creating, we decided it’s now or never to take the next step with Together Time. We started advertising and once our sales started coming through, this gave us the drive to continue to move forwards and develop further activity boxes for the months ahead.
The innovation: What was the biggest breakthrough for you with your business?
Our breakthrough moment came when we first succeeded in putting incredible activities filled with joy into a box that we could post. The feedback that flowed back from our customers reinforced that this was not only possible but achieved: “Can’t wait to get our next box. Little man cub is so excited. He so enjoyed the last box and as a busy working mum, laden with guilt, it was a brilliant fix for both of us. Thank you so much – so much joy to our family in more ways than one.”
Yin and Yang: How do you balance work and family?
For us, this is more than a business. Both of our families are involved and they continually support us through the process. Part of the work requires me to trial out all of our activities, which I get to do with my children. It’s an incredible job when you are working but playing with your kids at the same time. Sara and I play to our strengths and have our own roles within the business. We have complete trust in each other and faith in the complimentary skills that the other possesses, which enables us to fulfill our roles.
