Yin and Yang: How do you balance work and family?
I live with my boyfriend who is incredibly supportive of Toddles which helps massively. My parents are back in the UK so family for me is regular calls with my parents over Facetime. I’m hoping I’ll be able to see my family and friends back home at some point in 2021!
The drive: What challenges have you overcome?
Having no network in Australia has been challenging. I only moved over here at the start of this year, and it’s not exactly been the best year for networking! That meant when I started Toddles, I had to work extra hard at my marketing to get my brand name out there. Gradually, people tell their friends and it snowballs but it was definitely more difficult at the start.
For better or worse: What are the pros and cons of running your own business?
I love running Toddles because it’s something I truly believe in. Self motivation is so important when you’re a one-woman band – there’s no one to hold you accountable but yourself so you need to love what you’re doing to get you up in the morning! On the flip side, it can be really lonely being a solo founder so I definitely found that hard at first – now I keep myself company with my favourite podcasts: Radio Four ‘Women’s Hour’, Clare Press ‘Wardrobe Crisis’ and ‘No such thing as a fish’ are all well worth a listen!
Hopes and dreams: What next?
The idea behind Toddles is that it is working towards a circular economy model for baby clothes. Rather than a ‘take, make, waste’ model, we’re trying to keep products in a continual loop. We’re already doing this through our preloved and past season bundles, but I’d like to take it a step further and encourage customers to return their baby clothes to us once they no longer fit.
If customers return their baby clothes, they’ll receive store credit towards their next bundle. In a way, it’s moving towards renting the baby clothes which is actually the vision I had for Toddles originally. If we receive clothes that are unwearable, we’ll send them to Upparel to be recycled. So nothing is wasted. I’d also love to work with more brands with past season stock. The more brands we can work with, the less stock ends up sitting on warehouse shelves going to waste or worse still, to landfill.
To find out more, head to the Toddles website, and join their online communities on Facebook and Instagram.
