Wow. I am over­whelmed. I have spent the after­noon brows­ing around the world of British Mum­blog­gers. Why British? Well, I blog in Eng­lish myself for starters. I want to get to know them, their way of life, their likes and dis­likes and hopes and fears. And hope they want to get to know me.

Ran­domly start­ing to look for blog­gers is like lift­ing the blan­ket and dis­cov­er­ing a whole uni­verse. It’s of course over­whelm­ing and impres­sive how many moth­ers and fathers are out there, the the shar­ing that takes place is impres­sive. So much com­mu­nity. So much instant recog­ni­tion in the lifes of com­plete strangers. That is so reassuring! ;-)

At the same time I some­how want to find my way around before I start com­ment­ing, start get­ting in the game. Feels a bit like need­ing to do some care­ful eval­u­a­tion of the fields and the rules before start­ing to actively play. So, have started gen­tly by sub­scrib­ing to some selected newslet­ters from blog­gers that instantly appealed: Lit­tle­Mummy, Who’s the Mummy? amd A Mod­ern Mother to men­tion a few.

And last but not least: a direct email to AlphaMummy, a group blog of women who seem really cool. Who knows.… will they read this and reply?!

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Trains are great. Almost door-to-door high speed trans­porta­tion, such as the Thalys, con­nect­ing major cities in the Benelux and France. Within a short 3,5 hours, the Thalys is tak­ing its pas­sen­gers from Oh La La Paris back to the good ol’ Hague. The clear con­science that comes from choos­ing to travel green is of course an extra bonus.

And as most of us surely have expe­ri­enced, trains are great for meet­ing peo­ple. You’re seated next to a stranger for sev­eral hours, and if one has the nerve and energy to pick up con­ver­sa­tion, there is always some­thing to be learned. Some­times just about someone’s des­ti­na­tion or ori­gin, the book they brought along to read and some­times their whole life story … which surely may be inter­est­ing, but surely not always is rel­e­vant for busi­ness. Which of course also is not what one always looks or hopes for.

But yes­ter­day, on the Thalys storm­ing over the Low Coun­tries, the seat­ing arrange­ment was surely a jack­pot from a busi­ness point of view. Not only was the gen­tle­man next to me witty, ener­getic and inter­est­ing: he was also the inter­na­tional sales direc­tor for a major Amer­i­can com­pany deal­ing exclu­sively in dif­fer­ent kinds of safety prod­ucts, and with an annual turnover of over 1bnUS. Sli­i­i­i­ightly big­ger than my Mum­my­Mug Inc, thus. But nev­er­the­less, we found lots to talk about: he gladly shared his expe­ri­ence and insights, and I gladly shared the energy and chal­lenges I meet in my startup ven­ture and we both had fun. The 3,5 hours from Paris to The Hague lit­er­ally flew by as I got my feed of real-life sto­ries about the chal­lenges and oppor­tun­ti­ties in set­ting up inter­na­tional dis­tri­b­u­tion agree­ments, defend­ing trade­marks and man­ag­ing an ever evolv­ing and large prod­uct port­fo­lio on inter­na­tional scale.

So, thank you Thalys for offer­ing me not only a ride from A to B, but a mini-MBA mod­ule and a con­nec­tion that I surely look for­ward to stay­ing in touch with.

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Mum­my­Mug greet­ings from Paris!

Well, not exactly here for a work visit, that must be admitted.

But of course, as a entre­pre­neur one never stops working.…!

So, while wan­der­ing from the Eif­fel Tower to Notre Dame, I am am enjoy­ing keep­ing an eye out for the French way of doing things, and of course try­ing to imag­ine how the Mum­my­Mug would look here in the shops with baby items.

First of all — the name. Those of you who are French native speak­ers can per­haps give me some good advice here. it seems to me that even here in Paris, where I sup­pose it can­not get any more French, the Eng­lish lan­guage is slowly but surely mak­ing its mark.

Would Mum­my­Mug as a prod­uct name appeal here too?

Or, would French moth­ers and fathers pre­fer some­thing like.… Sur­Tasse? Tasse de Maman??

Sug­ges­tions welcome!

It strikes me here also that the cof­fee cul­ture is dif­fer­ent — a la fran­caise, every­thing is sim­ply a lit­tle bit more refined. Fine porce­lain cups, smaller serv­ings of neatly brewed espresso. Or a steam­ing Cafe Au Lait. Even my daugther Eleonore was treated to a cup of REAL choco­late milk at break­fast: no sug­ary pow­der quickly stirred into some luke­warm milk, but a slowly preared, foam­ing cup of per­fect choco­late, which we made together at the table from real cocoa and by alter­nat­ing hot milk with cold milk, served in two match­ing minia­ture jugs.

Now, that is a habit I might take up on the week­end, but feel we will not have time for on school rush mornings!

Greet­ings from Paris,
Miss MummyMug

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Last night, I was hon­ored to be invited as a Guest Speaker at the Inter­na­tional Rotary Club in The Hague. Cer­tainly an inter­na­tional bunch: about 30 mem­bers, young and old, from 20 dif­fer­ent coun­tries! I had been asked to reflect on the process of going from prod­uct idea to mar­ket, using my Mum­my­Mug adven­ture as a prac­ti­cal exam­ple. As always, it is really use­ful to take a step back and take stock, which one of course has to do in order to pre­pare the talk. And pre­pared I was, with graphs over the (the­o­ret­i­cal) process of going from the WOW-moment when a new idea takes root in the head and heart, to the real­ity of patent reg­is­tra­tion costs, pro­duc­tion man­age­ment and mar­ket­ing plans.

Of course nei­ther the beamer nor the com­puter worked in the end, and I had to impro­vise with­out my nice slides. Prob­a­bly all the bet­ter, as it became more a talk from the heart then.

And judg­ing from the reac­tions and ques­tions, the Rotary mem­bers thought it was inter­est­ing to hear about the 360 degree entre­pre­neur­ial chal­lenge that it is to try to take a dream to a prod­uct on the shelves.
My main mes­sage was that keep­ing the dream going and alive is the most essen­tial ingre­di­ent of suc­cess, because it takes sta­mina and energy (and deep pock­ets; yours or oth­ers) to go through the motions.

So, I shall prac­tice what I preach and start a new dream: I visu­alise that in a year or two, they ask me back in and give me the oppor­tu­nity to talk about my suc­cesses with the Mum­my­Mug in all kinds of vari­eties and on many mar­kets, and her sis­ter prod­ucts for the travel and leisure or the elderly mar­ket.….. Illus­trat­ing that will make a good graph!

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Today my daugh­ter Eleonore, who is half Swedish, half Dutch, has had her real Swedish bap­tism of fire — which I am proud to say she passed with fly­ing colours.

At the ten­der age of four, she man­aged to drive in her first wooden plug all by her­self, and thus helped me assem­ble the most rep­re­sen­ta­tive piece of fur­ni­ture of all from the most Swedish com­pany of them all: the Billy book­shelf from IKEA. I am sure you have heard of it. Chances you have one or two at home?!

Well, I have sev­eral now, and have decided to be proud of admit­ting it. Not a self evi­dent way to feel about it: a Billy is actu­ally that sort of pur­chase that you set out NOT to make. Too ordi­nary, too bor­ing, too… Billy. I started look­ing for a book­shelf, and vowed NOT to buy a Billy. Not again.

But.…. after look­ing around, real­is­ing that custom-made designer book­shelfs cost four times the money, that the Billy does the same job for a frac­tion of the price, looks neat and that all the dif­fer­ent avail­able ele­ments and mod­ules mean you can com­bine it into some­thing quite nice, I did it again. I bought Billy. The fact that they gave a 20% dis­count at IKEA yes­ter­day, to cel­e­brate that this prod­uct is already 30 years (!) in the mar­ket did not make the deci­sion more difficult.

The trip to IKEA was as always also a chance to tank up on Swedish-ness. To indulge in meat­balls, and to be sur­rounded by a sober, real­is­tic, no-frills but yet very cre­ative and inspir­ing atmos­phere that char­ac­terises this impres­sive Swedish com­pany. Because whether you like it or not, whether you have resisted the Billy-craze or not, I trust you agree with me that it is impres­sive to build up an ever expand­ing busi­ness of the reach, mag­ni­tude and influ­ence on people’s life that IKEA has achieved — and keep it a fam­ily run-business at that.

Com­pared to the super-tanker IKEA, my Mum­my­Mug com­pany is of course not more than a lit­tle row­ing boat. And I have not man­aged to keep Mum­my­Mug a fam­ily busi­ness. It has been nec­es­sary to raise cap­i­tal to go from idea to mar­ket, and I also much ben­e­fit from hav­ing part­ners in my com­pany that help build a viable strat­egy. But apart from that, there are many other ideals and aspects on doing busi­ness that I like to take inspi­ra­tion from this the most Swedish of all companies.

I per­ceive their strat­egy as as keep­ing it sim­ple. Keep­ing it down to earth. Strive to offer peo­ple some­thing they really need and some­thing and where the designer has payed atten­tion to form as well as func­tion. And to keep on lis­ten­ing, to stay tuned into what is actu­ally going on out there.

Now, those are busi­ness prin­ci­ples I also vow to abide by. To offer also a Mum­my­Mug that is use­ful, func­tional and well designed. Sim­ply from Swe­den, with love.

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Sat­ur­day morn­ing — bliss­fully quiet! Hus­band and daugh­ter has vis­ited fam­ily and are not expected back yet for a few hours. So, how bet­ter to use the time than to stay in bed a bit longer, sip a cof­fee (from a Mum­my­Mug — of course!) and reflect a moment on being a Mompreneur.

I came across the term Mom­pre­neur about half a year ago and instinc­tively felt I must be one. Sort of. Broadly speak­ing. I am a mother and I am an entre­pre­neur and I even make things for Mums. But what is that, actu­ally, a Mom­pre­neur? An entre­pre­neur who also is a mother, or a WAHM mother that is also an entre­pre­neur? Is it impor­tant to even thin about such detail? Yes, I believe so. Names, cat­e­gories and labels that we choose for our­selves send sig­nals to oth­ers about who we are. Per­haps good to match one’s expec­ta­tions on what that sig­nal is with the real­ity out there!

I see myself as much as a mother as I am an entre­pre­neur. I don’t want to choose, actu­ally, which is more impor­tant in my life. I did not choose to become an entre­pre­neur because I am a mother in any case — but I must admit that the flex­i­bil­ity that my entre­pre­neur­ial work gives me in terms of where and how I work — also greatly facil­i­tated by tech­nol­ogy of course — facil­i­tates my role as a mother. On the other hand being an entre­pre­neur is such a great respon­si­bil­ity that it also takes away the full free­dom to ‘mother’: I can’t imag­ine who would grant me mater­nity leave from my com­pany, should I get preg­nant again. In my old job, I sim­ply told my boss that I would not return to my desk for 6 months (yes, folks, that was pos­si­ble to piece together in Bel­gium where I lived at the time) and he just had to live with it — while I still picked up my pay check.

Curi­ous to hear from oth­ers out there what you put in the word. What kind of Mom­pre­neur are YOU? And how do you see other Mom­pre­neurs out there? What defines us? In any case, I do know that most of the women I have come across, for exam­ple at the incu­ba­tor in The Hague, the Nether­lands for entre­pre­neur­ial women where I have based my com­pany ( see www.womensbusinessinitiative.net ) I come across women who are as pas­sion­ate about busi­ness and their dreams as they are about their kids.

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I have just booked a ticket to Dus­sel­dorf. I will go there tomor­row, to visit the REHACARE Trade Fair (www.rehacare.com ), which is in full swing already. It’s a play­ground for every­one pro­vid­ing solu­tions for mak­ing life of elderly and hand­i­capped per­sons a lit­tle bit eas­ier. Some­one thought: would not the Mum­my­Mug also be handy for elderly? Read more…

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today, we’re at Martin’s place in Eiber­gen, in the east of the Nether­lands. Mar­tin is the designer of the Mum­my­Mug, so thanks to him we’ve been able to go from idea to a con­crete prod­uct. We are now in the last stages of get­ting ready for pro­duc­tion, and what bet­ter way to spend a Sat­ur­day than talk­ing through the last mea­sures we need to take to get ready?! ;-)

Let me tell you some­thing more about Mar­tin, he has an inter­est­ing back­ground for sure. Mar­tin is really what you would call a clas­sic inven­tor — he lives in the coun­try­side, and has, with his own two hands, single-handedly built a fan­tas­tic work­shop where he can do every­thing: work with metal, wood and plas­tics, mea­sure pres­sure, build pro­to­types … he sim­ply makes things!!  One day, a woman called Cecilia with a crazy idea walked into his gar­den.…. as you prob­a­bly guess, she came there to con­vince him that he should design a styl­ish and safe cof­fee mug, that would be called the Mum­my­Mug. Since then he has been a key mem­ber of the team.

From the start, Mar­tin has been pas­sion­ate about form as well as func­tion, and had his first train­ing in art/sculpture design. Now you can under­stand where the beau­ti­ful shape from the Mum­my­Mug han­dle comes from — that is a result of Martin’s aes­thetic tal­ents. Since 1985, Mar­tin runs his own com­pany, Pro­tos Inven­tive Prod­uct Design, and he teaches stu­dents of indus­trial design in pro­to­typ­ing at a local uni­ver­sity (Enschede).

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Ever won­dered why some­one one day came up with the idea for a prod­uct like the Mum­my­Mug? And quit their job to try to make it from idea to mar­ket? Well, that some­one was — me! Check out the new pre­sen­ta­tion of the Mum­my­Mug Team, where we let you know a bit more about who stands behind this prod­uct and what dri­ves us to make it happen.

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Today we are talk­ing about the web­site, which has just gone live as you know. Eelco is explain­ing us the con­tent man­age­ment sys­tem and how we can post on the web­site. I am very excited to get blog­ging and share my story of mak­ing the Mum­my­Mug a great expe­ri­ence for you all!  More to come.

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