As part of the Morning Lazziness series about empowering women who encourage and do incredible things with their ideas in society, I had the pleasure of interviewing Laura Crawford.
Horrified with the impact 3 billion nappies and 11 billion wet wipes a year were having in the UK, Laura Crawford, decided not to return to her previous role as a Management Consultant in the Banking industry after her maternity leave, but to launch her own B-Corp sustainable business. Born from the idea that our babies’ should not have to wear cheap plastic and start their early lives negatively impacting their future world, Laura developed a healthier, more natural, sustainable nappy and wet wipe. Laura has grown the company to its present £1m turnover with a strong loyal subscriber base. The company has benefitted from +£1 million of investment and recently expanded the product range and launched a marketing campaign to take the brand more mainstream and available. When she’s not steering the Mama Bamboo ship, Laura can be found roasting marshmallows on a campfire in her garden or making a delightful mess at home with baking ingredients.
Here’s what we found out about Laura’s daily routine, followed by an exclusive Q+A.
Can you share the journey that led you to become an entrepreneur and the inspiration behind starting your own business?
Frustration. And Mum Guilt. I don’t like making compromises. When my babies were little, it felt like I was forced to make a choice between plastic nappies which were absorbent but gave them nappy rash and damaged the planet, eco nappies which felt like paper and didn’t absorb enough and leaked, or the inconvenience and yuckiness of cloth nappies which avoided landfill but polluted the water. I started Mama Bamboo because I genuinely thought there had to be a solution which ticked all the boxes; absorbent, soft, breathable, and sustainable.
As a woman in the business world, what challenges have you encountered, and what strategies have you used to overcome them?
It’s now fairly well known that securing funding as a female founded business is incredibly difficult. We tried one or two of the traditional routes and got turned down. I was told I was uninvestable because I worked part time around family life! But we were so blessed to find Triodos Bank and in particular the lovely Diane. She was a customer of ours and recommended us to her team when she returned to work after maternity leave. Triodos supported us all the way through two EIS funding rounds and secured +£1.1 million.
How do you effectively manage the demands of your professional life while maintaining a healthy personal life as an entrepreneur?
It is tricky at times but we have a strong policy of hiring return-to-work parents who have had a longer than average career break to raise families. We offer fully flexible, part time work and all staff have autonomy to set their own hours and flexi their time according to their needs. It is embedded in our culture and modelled at every level of the business, including me. My first priority and job title is ‘Mummy’.
What networking strategies have proven most effective in building meaningful connections within your industry?
We are a B-Corp and found the networking opportunities in this community to be our most productive. Finding the right network is key. Joining a community of likeminded businesses has been invaluable for us.
How do you seek out mentorship, and what role has it played in your entrepreneurial journey?
We did, at one stage, have external NEDs on our board to help guide us and give mentorship, but we found ourselves realizing that we knew our business and cared more than anyone else. We learnt to have confidence in our own decisioning. This is only really possible though because we have a very committed close knit core team who are unafraid to challenge each other. That’s not to say we wouldn’t now be open to advice and mentoring as we want to expand the business. There’s a certain realisation amongst ourselves that we’re probably exhausted our own knowledge and expertise and we are seeking external help.
What strategies have you found most effective for selling your products and reaching your target audience?
We are almost exclusively B2C which gives us an advantage of getting to know our customer really well. We communicate with them before purchase and after purchase over a number of months, so we get a very clear picture of who they are and how their priorities and situations change along the 2-3 year journey of their early parenthood. This knowledge has helped us hone our paid advertising and organic social content to our specific niche sector.
Can you describe a significant setback or failure you faced in your business and the steps you took to recover from it?
Once the dust had settled on the hospitals and the vaccinations after Covid, and everyone went back to work, it’s a little known fact that the worldwide freight market stayed in turmoil for another 3 years. Prices on containers jumped from $3k to $18k and the shipping companies forced prices to stay at ridiculous levels for way longer than necessary. It’s one of the key factors in today’s high inflation rates – everything we import into UK is way more expensive than it was 5 years ago because the shipping prices are still artificially high. In our business we couldn’t simply increase RRP prices to cover these extra costs. Our customers are subscribers so prices are fairly set and we do not change them. And the few retail customers we had, have strict rules about price increases. We actually had to pull out of Ocado because the freight inflation meant we were losing money on every pack sold. To recover we made cost cutting decisions elsewhere and really streamlined our operations. We focused even more so on our B2C business and let the wholesale / retail arm reduce. We can offer our customers better prices direct than we ever can through other channels.
What key piece of advice would you offer to aspiring women entrepreneurs who are just starting their journeys?
Don’t doubt yourself into inertia. It’s very easy to get bogged down in planning and replanning, and responding to every naysayers’ opinion. If you have a great idea and you feel confident that you’ve done enough research and basic planning, just get on with it. You’ll make mistakes. You’ll learn along the way. But al least you will be doing it rather than daydreaming it.
Is there a specific mantra or quote that resonates with you and guides your actions as an entrepreneur?
Remember your why. Why are you in business? Why do you want to do this? Being an entrepreneur can be quite draining and at times, quite lonely. You have a have a clear sense of why you’re doing it and why it’s a good thing. For me, I wanted a business which was a force for good in this world. I wanted to reverse the damage we were inflicting on our planet. And I wanted work to support my young family, not take me away from them.
