The Maternity Market is owned and run by mums and best friends Bronwyn and Nikki. Inspired by their own experiences of pregnancy, they had a dream to help women through these emotional and challenging times. Through their ‘mama advice network’ and their online store selling tried and tested, innovative products, they support mind, body and spirit during pregnancy and through the postpartum period. Their one-stop shop provides self-care and practical products that truly make a difference in women’s lives.
The passion: What inspired you to set up your business?
We were and are inspired to help women through the most emotional and often most confusing time of their lives: pregnancy and postpartum. In our own pregnancies, we really felt the lack of stores out there that focused on us, the mums. So, the idea for The Maternity Market was really born from the need for an Australian one-stop shop stocking self-care and practical products to support women through their pregnancy and postpartum – somewhere where they come first, because we didn’t feel that in our own experiences.
The launch: How did you start out in the beginning?
A lot of research! Going live was the culmination of nearly 2 years of strategy, research, product testing, building supplier relationships, writing, designing a website and figuring out the boring but necessary things you need to do to get a business up and running. From the get-go we decided we wanted to start small and grow organically, whether that be quickly or more of a slow burn. We want to achieve our growth by building trust and our reputation with our customers, knowing that at the core of pregnancy and postpartum, most of the advice you get is from your networks. Our mission is to be one of the first things that your friend/sister/cousin/workmate recommends to you when you’re talking about pregnancy.
We only launched in July of this year so we have already grown much faster than we had anticipated which is fab and both Nikki and I are really blessed with great day jobs that allow us to reinvest every cent of profit back into the growth of the business.
The innovation: What was the biggest breakthrough for you with your business?
The biggest breakthrough for us was when we really went for it with our two signature products: The Fanny Flusher and The Fanny Freezer. These are two of our most practical products and they do exactly what they say! These two products, a perineal bottle and maternity pad with built-in instant cooling strip are ESSENTIAL products for your postpartum, but they aren’t sold widely in Australia. It’s our mission to make sure as many women as possible know that these products are out there, because they can be so helpful in those crazy few days and weeks after birth.
We’re really proud to be the first company to bring these products to the forefront in Australia.
Yin and Yang: How do you balance work and family?
Balance? What’s that? This is definitely the hardest part about owning a business, working other full-time jobs and having growing families. We like to make sure that we tackle The Maternity Market when our kids are in bed (which means A LOT of late nights for us) and we also like to bring the kids into the mix, sometimes they come in and “help” us pack in the warehouse (it’s not help at all!). Our partnership also works really great because we have adapted each of our roles to our strengths but we’re also always there to support each other.
