The drive: What challenges have you overcome?
Owning a clothing brand is a bit of a rollercoaster, especially in today’s financial situation for the majority of the world. We have such a niche product that I sometimes worry if I’m doing the right thing, if I’m creating the correct designs that the majority of breastfeeding women would like to see, and the list goes on.
The biggest challenge I’ve personally encountered is creating and maintaining our website. I did this in order to try and keep costs down. It’s ended up costing us quite a lot of money. I’ve definitely made mistakes along the way, and it still doesn’t behave exactly as I want it to at times – but it was a costly mistake that unfortunately I’m not able to amend immediately, and I’m still learning how to master it on
a daily basis.
For better or worse: What are the pros and cons of running your own business?
The main benefit for myself is that I get to spend 100% of my time with Olivia. I’ve loved waking up with her every morning and starting our day together, the contact naps that she sometimes needs that I’m able to give her because I’ve not got to leave the house to go to work.
Another massive pro for me is hearing the feedback from other mums. Hearing how my brand has brought back their confidence postpartum is such a win for this brand – and it was my main aim of starting Mama Glam.
I love hearing all of their positive remarks about the quality of the clothes, the discreet zips and how they’ve not thought twice about needing to feed their baby wherever they are as they feel comfortable and can conveniently feed their babies.
I think the biggest con and the one that nobody speaks about as business owners is the unknown: the constant guessing from month to month if we’re on target and if we’re reaching our target audience through the likes of social media. Which brings me onto social media… I struggle day to day with my social media presence – I’m your typical sporty mum living in leggings and an oversized hoodie with my hair in a bun and I very rarely wear makeup, so creating content for social media makes me feel nervous, and I know I put too much effort to fix my hair and makeup before I create content. This is something I’m trying to work on myself as I know my audience and my target audience is mums. The last thing I want to do is create a false reality that my followers feel the need to compare themselves to.
Hopes and dreams: What next?
Where to start without giving too much away?
We’re still so new so it’s hard to put everything down on paper at this stage of our journey. We plan on adding many more clothing options to our website, so these will be different garments, different styles and many more colours and designs.
I want to continue to empower women and to continue to offer mums support, regardless of what stage they’re at in their breastfeeding journey. Olivia will be a year old in December and we have no intentions of slowing down our breastfeeding journey. I’ll be allowing her to wean herself as and when she’s ready to do so.
Visit the Mama Glam website for find out more, and follow them on Facebook and Instagram.
