Mumpreneur Feature – Antonia and Karen ***Giveaway CLOSED***

Today we say hello to Antonia & Karen of Kiddiebase – Make sure you enter their giveaway at the end of the post 🙂

Who are you? 

We are KiddieBase – co-owned and directed by Antonia and Karen.  Antonia has two sons and Karen has four sons – all under 6 – the youngest was actually born the day after KiddieBase launched at the end of September!  We both live in Beaconsfield in Buckinghamshire although we are originally from Birmingham and Bolton respectively.   We met through a post-natal group we both attended nearly 4 years ago now! 

What do you do? 

KiddieBase is an online shopping emporium packed full of interesting stores all selling wonderful baby, children’s and maternity products – gifts, toys, clothes, art, accessories, slings, travel, personalised products and so much more!  We are different to other shopping sites in this sector because our site is actually a platform where approved retailers host a branch of their store and sell their goods to their customers themselves.  We also have an information area where we provide a range of useful information including hospital bag and holiday packing lists, recipes, tips for entertaining children and information on homeopathy and nutrition.

When did you establish your business?

We have been evolving our ideas since January 2010 and then we launched   www.kiddiebase.co.uk in September 2010.

 What made you start your own business?

In our research we found so many lovely products from small retailers that are only available in a limited way and nothing that actually brought them together on a quality baby and children’s focussed site – we thought it we could help retailers of new or growing baby and children’s products businesses, many of who are women combining their businesses with their families like us, then that would be a wonderful thing.  We are keen to try and establish a family-friendly business for both ourselves and anyone that comes and works with us as we grow!


 

 What do you love about working for yourself?

When we work long hours and late nights it’s because we want to and because we’re building our own company!

 Is there anything you would go back and do differently if you could? 

 Not much actually (yet – it’s still early days!).  Maybe we would have worked a lot harder in the earlier part of the year rather than ending up with so much to do in the pre-launch timeframe which also coincided with the summer holidays and the third trimester of Karen’s pregnancy – on the otherhand though we’re both deadline-driven people so it was probably always going to end up that way!

 Finally If there is 1 thing that you could tell other Mums who want to start their own business; what would it be?

Work out how social media can help your business and use it!  For us, Twitter in particular has been invaluable as it has led us to so many wonderful retailers that are now selling their products on our website!

Antonia & Karen would like to treat one lucky reader to an item from Kiddiebase up to the value of £10 or £10 off a larger item! Visit their store and come back here and let me know which item you would buy if you were to win & you never know you just might be lucky! (You must complete this to enter)

• Follow me on twitter @SoniaThorpe
• Follow Kiddiebase on twitter @Kiddiebase
• Tweet this – “£10 to spend at @Kiddiebase up for grabs on @SoniaThorpe blog http://thismummyloves.blogspot.com”