Mompreneurs Making It Online

Women entrepreneurs – mothers, in particular – are staking out an online niche. Ebooks. iPod apps. Diapers? Scoff if you will, but for a unique group of online entrepreneurs, tapping into consumers with a vested interest in a baby’s bottom is proving a winning strategy. ?

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Motherhood has spawned a new 
wave of online women entrepreneurs.

Women entrepreneurs – mothers, in particular – are staking out an online niche.

Ebooks. iPod apps. Diapers? Scoff if you will, but for a unique group of online entrepreneurs, tapping into consumers with a vested interest in a baby’s bottom is proving a winning strategy. 


Take Karen Randall. When the 34-year-old welcomed her first child into the world four years ago, she took a year of mat leave from her job as an occupational therapist and immersed herself in motherhood. She soon realized she didn’t want to return to the nine-to-five world. And as luck would have it, she also quickly pinpointed a gap in the local market.


“We knew we wanted to use cloth diapers with our daughter, but we didn’t have a clue as to how to do it,” she recalls. “My mom, who had used cloth diapers on me, had this experience of flat diapers that she folded up and pinned on. I knew that it had changed, but I didn’t really know how. Trying to get that information was really confusing and overwhelming.”


Once Randall did get her hands on the elusive item, she quickly attracted the attention of her mom-group peers: “I would pull out a diaper and change her and other moms would be like, What the heck is that? Where did you find it? How did you do it?”


Randall launched the newandgreen.com website in 2007 from her North Vancouver home, and New and Green Baby Co. now ships about 750 packages of diapers a year, in addition to conducting workshops for 400 parents. Now a mother of two (Ella, 4, and Clare, 2), Randall employs a part-time staff of four who help with the warehouse operations and with cloth-diapering workshops that spread word of mouth and drive traffic to the site. 


Randall is far from an exception. According to Statistics Canada, female self-employment grew by 43 per cent between 1991 and 2001. Here in B.C., about 300 self-employed women are members of Enterprising Moms Network Inc., an organization founded by president Kelley Scarsbrook who is – you guessed it – a mom of two.


“I think it has become a really fast trend of women going online to start their businesses,” observes Scarsbrook, who estimates about 40 per cent of her members have done so. “It’s probably one of the smartest ways that moms can make money. It’s really easy to start up, first of all. And of course it speaks to women who, perhaps, want to test the water first: moms who have left the corporate world and are thinking they want to go into business for themselves.” She lists local examples such as Homeworks Etc. Designs Inc., an online home and accessories design shop launched in 2007 by Jacqueline De’Ath; and Raspberry Kids Inc., a one-stop-shop for high-end clothing, toys and accessories launched in 2005 by Sue Sinclair. 


Even with competition entering the market – Ecobotts Baby Products Ltd., an online eco-friendly diaper store, launched in Vancouver in 2009 – Randall has no plans to open a retail storefront any time soon. And as far as fellow online mompreneur Annemarie Tempelman-Kluit is concerned, there’s really no need to do so. The founder of Yoyomama, a free daily email and website that reviews local products and activities, Tempelman-Kluit notes that the ease of use of an online business goes both ways.


“Online shopping is so easy when you’re a mom because you don’t have to drag your kids to the store with you, and they’re having a tantrum, and you’re trying to try on jeans and pick out clothes for them,” remarks Tempelman-Kluit, a 43-year-old Vancouver mother of two whose home business now supports the family. “I think online shopping is a great resource for moms. You can do it in pyjamas while drinking a glass of wine. You can do it at midnight.” Plus, she adds, “Moms are a renewable resource; there’s always more of them coming along.”