Natural, cost-efficient and eco-friendly – are you giving cloth nappies a go? They are easy to use, great for baby’s skin, save you money in the long run and of course keep all those thousands of disposables out of landfill. Real Nappies are a small family run business that has been around for over 14 years, so they know what they are doing. They are the only cloth nappy company to offer a guarantee for their nappies to last two babies. We spoke to Claire Johnstone to learn more.
The passion: What inspired you to set up your business?
When we had our first son, we knew we were going to use cloth nappies, so we started looking around for some that suited our wants and needs. We were adamant that we wanted to have cotton and we wanted velcro fasteners. After a fair bit of research we came across Real Nappies that ticked both those boxes as well as some that initially we didn’t even know we had. We took the plunge and decided to buy the Birth to Potty pack.
Nine months into using them and we hadn’t had a single leak, found them so easy to use and loved them. So, we got in touch and told the owners just how great we thought Real Nappies are. Turns out they were looking to sell the business, so… we bought it! We knew it was a great product, we totally believe in cloth nappies and we want other people to have the same experience we did.
You can read our whole story on how we got into it in our blog.
The Launch: How did you start out in the beginning?
It was a little tricky because we were taking over an existing business with a young child and a full-time job. There was a lot to learn, and quickly. Also, the business had been a bit let go, so we had a lot of work that needed to be done to get systems updated and working again. Initially we had a lot of tech trouble, but fortunately people were very understanding and we now manage to have things steaming along.
The innovation: What was the biggest breakthrough for you with your business?
I’m not sure we have had a single big breakthrough, but we are learning and adapting all the time. As we constantly learn more about the nappy and baby industry, we make changes to our nappies or the way we do things. We recently launched our organic range, which is in response to learning more about the cotton industry.
Since taking on the business we have realized that our main role is educating people on the advantages of cloth nappies as there is still a lot of misinformation about cloth nappies out there. A lot of people think of cloth nappies as the old difficult origami of our grandparents’ time and don’t understand the benefits gained by using cloth, and how simple it is now! Also, the power of a good infographic can be amazing. We created an infographic that showed the price difference between cloth and disposables and it spread through social media really quickly, which got people really thinking about cloth nappies in a different way.
