Caring for your baby can seem like navigating a minefield. It is not easy to find the answers to your questions. Are you giving your baby the healthiest start? Can I be doing more to protect my child? These are some of the questions parents ask themselves.
Often alighting on the right answer feels like you’ve just navigated a minefield. That’s where the passion of mompreneur like Joanne Austin can help. Founder of Mother Nature Products, Austin describes the company as a partnership with nature creating products for babies, mothers, and their family.
“Whether it’s our all-natural skincare, laundry-care, mother-care or nappies the difference in using our natural products is felt. The side-effect is that you can feel good about not polluting the earth with wasteful plastic and chemical products.”
Over the summer their SPF 40 sunscreen for sensitive skins and renewable swim nappies are popular. Their award winning Bambo Nature nappies are popular year-round. There is even a new 100% plant-based laundry detergent. But for Austin there is a personal favourite. “My all-time favourite has to be our 100% natural goat’s milk soap and lotion. It’s a wonderful everyday soap and lotion my family cannot do without. I sometimes joke that I keep my company going just so I can continue to make our goat’s milk products just for us to use!”
Austin’s medical background, she remains a practicing nursing sister, has been useful in fine tuning the health and safety elements of the Mother Nature range. There is another reason that Austin points to for choosing the business she has built. It lies at the heart of the success of the ‘homemade’ health sector.
“I grew up in a home where we made stuff. I think as parents we underestimate the benefit of teaching our children to be self-sufficient at home: learning to sew, knit, crochet, create art, cook, grow plants and veg, make your own skin-care from nature and so it goes.”
Not relying on big brands is important to Austin, and her customers. They have created a community of the like minded that has grown demand and built her business apart from the often-overwhelming presence of corporations.
“Experience over time gives one a better understanding of what it takes to make a product ready for the public to buy. I do not find that copying other companies helps you. One loses the all- important unique selling point. I don’t bother to follow the competition. It’s too distracting and I never know what is real and what just a trumped-up marketing campaign. Instead, I follow the market and try to listen to my customers.”
Mother Nature Products, and other natural product companies, nourish a growing market of consumers looking for products that meet their commitment to doing less harm. As Austin points out, many of the companies in the market today started off just as she did 16 years ago, working a stall in local Saturday markets.
“There was a growing interest in eco-friendly products, and we had customers looking for us. My first web site was very basic, but it was a way of reaching customers looking for our products and in those days not a lot of companies had web sites. It wasn’t considered important. Having a web site in 2006 really helped me grow my brand and reach customers.”
There are happy clients that have grown with the company which has made marketing simpler. But marketing in the time of Covid has become tougher, especially for Austin who thrives on meeting and talking to her clients. To keep growing she has embraced ecommerce where, she says, access to so many related products make selling more difficult.
So, she has upped her online marketing skills.
“It is more complex today and there is a lot to keep up with. For instance, I don’t like making videos. Mine always look naff!! It costs money to pay someone to do it for you so this year I am going to have to challenge myself and become an actress.”
Being a small business owner has been a learning curve. The most important piece of advice she would give herself was to become more business financially literate.
“Without earning money there is almost no point in carrying on with your business, even in my case where my primary goal is to make a difference to the environment.”
Knowing what she knows now would she start her company? She is still driven by the passion to educate families on the impact their choices have on the environment. She points out that a single baby in disposable nappies creates one tonne of non-recyclable and non-biodegradable waste.
“It’s not easy to stick your neck out and have your say; but owning your own business is rewarding when the product and service you create and the vision you envisage is well received in the open market. It makes all the hard work and effort worth it when you get it right.”
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