Mums in Business: Chiggs Wheels
Stumbling around bleary eyed in the middle of the night, trying to remember the last time the baby was breast or bottle fed or even administered some infant paracetamol need never be a problem again.
The range of innovative greetings cards from Chiggs are a wheelie good idea.
Designed in appearance to resemble a car-parking disc, parents can set the time their baby was last attended to, removing all need for late night memory, tracking down pens or lost little bits of paper.
The Chiggs Ltd business was set up by Harrogate based MumsClub member and mother Elizabeth Geldart.
Elizabeth designed and created the Chigg wheel herself after making a one-off in 2005 for a sleep deprived friend and her hungry baby.
Realising the potential in the product for new parents, Elizabeth spent some months designing and creating the definitive wheel before finding a supplier.
To begin with, Elizabeth thought she only had an internet based business, but this soon changed opening up even more opportunities.
Elizabeth explains: “ Although I’d initially planned to sell online through my own website, I designed the Baby Feed Wheel in blue, pink and lemon with “to” and “from” printed on the reverse. As well as being a thoroughly useful product for parents, it could also be sent as a congratulations card or ‘new baby’ gift, just as I had made for my friend.
“This opened up the possibility of wholesale sales, so I started by approaching local baby, card and gift shops and received an excellent response.”
Just a few months later, Elizabeth found herself back at the patent office with her second product – The Baby Medicine Wheel.
“Whilst on a short break with friends, their little boy started teething and needed medicine” says Elizabeth. “ Our friends used a Baby Feed Wheel to record the time of each dose so that they knew when the next dose would be due.”
But the wheel’s success didn’t stop with the parents of newborns. Elizabeth went on to create the Get Well Wheel after adults started using baby wheels to help them to keep track of their own daily medicines.
Elizabeth is quite rightly proud of her success with Chiggs Wheels, now on sale in shops through the UK and abroad. “I’ve found developing my own inventions into a business is full of challenges, but also incredibly rewarding. It’s a long way from my previous career as an Air Stewardess, and has been an incredible learning curve!”
Family has remained central to both Elizabeth’s home life and business throughout the whole process. “Along the way I’ve had great support from my husband Andrew, and my daughter Holly, now 6, is an important part of the business. She’s handed leaflets out at trade fairs, licked stamps, stuck stickers and if she had her way she would be allowed to answer the ‘phone, too!”
The Baby Feed Wheel is not only a pretty card to give to a new family, it is also incredibly practical. In the tired tinged first weeks when mums have to keep track of their baby’s feeding pattern, nothing could be more useful.
For mums giving birth by caesarean section, the Get Well Wheel will help them keep track of the endless supply of painkillers and potential anti-biotics.
The Baby Feed Wheel is available in blue, pink and lemon
Cards purchased online come with free personalisation service
£3.99 each (inc P & P)
www.chiggs.co.uk