Mum­my­Mug con­grat­u­lates fel­low Dutch Mumpre­neur Noortje van der Loo with the Baby Inno­va­tion Award for most inno­v­a­tive toy, that she won at the major con­sumer fair for young par­ents, the “Negen­maan­den­beurs”, in Ams­ter­dam last week­end. I met her for the first time at Kind&Jugend in 2008, and know she’s really earned this recognition.

Her well-designed and unique prod­uct ; It’s A Clock ; visu­alises the pass­ing of time in a way that chil­dren can relate to. If you put one of the six cards that are deliv­ered with it at the right time of the day; your child will know when it is time to get up, have lunch, snacks and din­ner, when to take a bath and when it is bedtime.

It’s a Clock was found by the jury to “famil­iar­ize chil­dren with the con­cept of time and daily sched­ules in an orig­i­nal way. It’s a clock has an attrac­tive design using color and shape. It offers a lot of fun watch­ing the lit­tle char­ac­ter moves with the minute hand and sec­ond hand and is thus an orig­i­nal and attrac­tive product .”

Noortje her­self explains it as follows:

“All chil­dren have a need to under­stand the pass­ing of time and the struc­ture of the day.  Many con­cepts of time look easy for grown-ups, but are true mind-breakers for chil­dren. “How long is an hour?” “When is tomor­row?” “How long until my birth­day?”.  Research shows that when chil­dren under­stand time bet­ter, they feel more secure and in control.”

But most kids do not learn to tell the time until they are 8 years old, while many of them already mas­ter com­plex tricks of cal­cu­lus by that age. But chil­dren look intu­itively at coloured big objects that move fast. On a tra­di­tional clock the most impor­tant hand – the hour hand – is small, black and it hardly moves. With the inno­v­a­tive design of “It’s a Clock!” chil­dren can under­stand what time it is from the age of 3 because the hour hand is easy to rec­og­nize for chil­dren, and the cards that help to struc­ture the day.”

Keep up the good work Noortje — what is going to be the next addi­tion to the It’s A Clock prod­uct range??

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I was brows­ing the web today for a smart and fun present for a good friend of mine who just had her first baby. You know the sit­u­a­tion: it has to be prac­ti­cal, fun, orig­i­nal, use­ful, cool… and cost some­where around max 25 euros (since MANY friends tend to have kids this year). Via the great Dutch web­plat­form Trotse Moed­ers (‘Proud Moth­ers’), man­aged very well by a newly found IRL friend of mine, I stum­bled upon some great hand-made Nappy Wal­lets from the Aussie Mum-invented brand ‘Belly Bumps To Baby Hugs’- and thought — hey! This is a winner!

The Nappy Wal­let will hold (sur­prise..!) those nap­pies any new mother sim­ply needs to bring as soon as she leaves the house, plus all the other essen­tials: wipes, small tube of nappy rash cream and other small items that are use­ful when one is out and about. And has it has small pieces of rib­bon at the bottom,one to attach the keys to and the other to attach a dummy to. Fin­ished off with a handy strap, so it can be hung on the stroller.

Handy to just grab and go — and makes that big, bulky, heavy dia­per bag, that I used to lounge around, history!

As I’m sure my friend has bet­ter things to do right now, with a 2 day old baby in her arms, than read my blog, I am pretty sure it will still be a sur­prise when she unwraps it. But I’ll surely ask for a review again a few months’ down the line, when the Nappy Wal­let hope­fully has come to good use!

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Today, I met Navah who runs Tag-On; a com­mu­ni­ca­tion con­sul­tancy that devel­ops prac­ti­cal, hands-on Social Media Strate­gies for brands and com­pa­nies. We were sit­ting next to each other the blogger’s group that meets up every two weeks at the busi­ness cen­tre where I am based, the Women’s Busi­ness Ini­tia­tive in The Hague: a great way to get some dis­ci­pline in the blog­ging, share best prac­tices and — get blogging!

But most impor­tantly, it gen­er­ates real-life encoun­ters, like this one. Nor­mally, I fea­ture Mumpre­neurs who have invented a prod­uct, but this time, I make way for Navah.

Navah is a recent Mumpre­neur who has a three-year old daugther and started her busi­ness this year. Her pas­sion is to share the insight that

“no mat­ter what busi­ness you are work­ing in, there is always a way you can ben­e­fit from social media!” 

Her blog is a stream of good tips and links to use­ful resources, such as her lat­est post which is a con­cise descrip­tion of how Facebook’s new pri­vacy con­trols work, illus­trated in a sim­ple screen capture.

Fol­low Navah on Twit­ter , check out her blog and Face­book page!

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Spot­ted on Spring­wise: Readeo; an online com­mu­ni­ca­tion tool to allow chil­dren and their fam­i­lies to read together in real time over the Inter­net. It com­bines a video chat with online vir­tual children’s books to cre­ate an inter­ac­tive expe­ri­ence that the team behind Readeo calls BookChatTM. If you sub­scribe to the ser­vice ($9,95 per month) and both you and your kid have access to a com­puter and a web­cam, you can share a bed­time story even if you hap­pen to be at the other side of the world.

I must admit that I’m not a big fan of expe­ri­enc­ing a book through a dig­i­tal read­ing device. I have no urge what­so­ever to jump on the iPad train and will never — ever — exchange my wall of books I have dragged around for a mem­ory stick hold­ing 5,000 vol­umes. I pre­fer a good ol’ book, prefer­ably a heavy one, rest­ing on my lap. Also when read­ing to my daughter.

But — my mother also refused for years to instal a microwave oven in our kitchen in the early 80’s.… Turns out she was only a slow adopter, because now she could not imag­ine a kitchen with­out it. And I guess the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree after all — so who knows, per­haps I’ll be read­ing sto­ries from a screen soon enough.

And for some­thing like Readeo, I would be will­ing to give it a go. I really see the use  in  pro­vid­ing an oppor­tu­nity for fam­i­lies who are apart to simul­ta­ne­ously share a story moment together. That read­ing moment is in our fam­ily — as I believe also in so many oth­ers — one of the cosiest parts of the day.  An oppor­tu­nity for inter­ac­tion, for teach­ing, lis­ten­ing to each other. And re-living those child­hood mem­o­ries through pass­ing on the sto­ries we our­selves loved when we were kids.

When I travel, this is one of the moments I miss the most. And I dare to bet my daugh­ter feels the same way.

And it was pre­cisely the need to con­nect and share, and the lack of a good solu­tion for meet­ing that need, that lead to the cre­ation of Readeo, which is devel­oped and launched by a Chicago-based startup com­pany. Founder and inven­tor Coby wanted to facil­i­tate the inter­ac­tion between his son and the grand­par­ents, who lived live 1500 miles away.

In other words — another exam­ple of some­thing inven­tive, by par­ents for par­ents, solv­ing a real and hands-on chal­lenge we face in our daily lives. Way to go!

Readeo is cur­rently only avail­able to users in the US, but per­haps some­one will pick up a license for Europe soon enough?? Who­ever gets going: drop me a line, so I can pro­mote my favourite titles for the vir­tual library selection ;-)!

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Yes­ter­day, I had the plea­sure of being inter­viewed by multi-venture entre­pre­neur and Damir Perge for an arti­cle for an online com­mu­nity for entre­pre­neurs, Entre­pre­neur­dex, where entre­pre­neurs can learn, share, social­ize, con­nect and con­duct busi­ness (and have fun!).

Once again thanks Damir for want­ing to tell my story — or rather, that of the MummyMug™!

It turned out a real cool dis­cus­sion on the plea­sures and chal­lenges of entre­pre­neur­ship, prod­uct devel­op­ment and life in gen­eral. I am surely curi­ous to see what Damir will make out of it.

Let me sim­ply share one quote of Damir’s, which truly flat­tered me, espe­cially com­ing from an accom­plished prod­uct designer such as him:

‘The Mum­my­Mug™ is truly beau­ti­ful — the Maserati of Cof­fee Mugs!”

Now, who would not be happy with that?!

Espe­cially if you con­sider that ‘Crafts­man­ship, class-leading per­for­mance and a love of engi­neer­ing finesse: this is the com­bi­na­tion of val­ues behind the Maserati leg­end.’ Even to be men­tioned in the same sen­tence is thus an honour.

How­ever, as the mar­gin on the Mum­my­Mug™ will be just a tiny bit less than the mar­gin on a Maserati .….……

.…… I must admit that I do hope that the nom­i­nal annual sales vol­ume of the Mum­my­Mug™ will be some­what big­ger than that of this beau­ti­ful car!.

Photo source: Press Pack AutoRai2007

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Are you an aspir­ing (Mum)blogger but not sure where to start and how it is done?

I’ve got a good tip for you. Being a begin­ner myself, I have signed up for the Mum-bloggers E-course, run by Erica from Lit­tle­Mummy.

Divided into three courses of 10 weeks each (Begin­ner, Inter­me­di­ate and Advanced) she takes you step by step through the basics, such as start­ing a blog, posts and pages and com­ment­ing eti­quette, basic SEO, join­ing groups and reviews and com­pe­ti­tions — and more. She tells me that the Inter­me­di­ate and Advanced courses will cover  Slideshows, video, analysing blog data, pod­cast­ing, mon­e­tiz­ing, Email list build­ing, newslet­ters .… and finally e-courses and ebooks, so you can end up know­ing how to share your knowl­edge as well!

I am about two thirds through the Beginner’s level. the obvi­ous plus-points is that for free, it is infor­ma­tive and — it is extensive.

What I most like is its struc­ture and care­ful avoid­ance of infor­ma­tion over­load. Thanks to the weekly pace, you actu­ally not get more infor­ma­tion than you can digest dur­ing the startup of a blog.  I see the E-course email in my inbox, it takes no more than 15 min­utes to inter­nalise what it says. Because it is not more infor­ma­tion than I can digest, the mes­sage actu­ally sticks.And I am encour­aged to apply and try what she is talk­ing about.

Also, Erica’s style is to the point, informed and has a friendly tone.

So, thumbs up for Erica — and wish­ing all you prospec­tive blog­gers out there some happy reading!

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I don’t plan to make this blog a clas­sic prod­uct review plat­form — there are enough good ones out there doing that already. 

But I do plan to share inspi­ra­tional sto­ries of other suc­cess­ful Mumpre­neurs and their prod­uct or ser­vice. First and fore­most, I sim­ply feel tremen­dous respect for what they have accom­plished. I know from my own expe­ri­ence that suc­ceed­ing in prod­uct devel­op­ment, brand­ing, estab­lish­ing an IP port­fo­lio, con­vinc­ing part­ners and poten­tial cus­tomers of your idea, sourc­ing man­u­fac­tur­ers, going to trade fairs and, last but not least, rais­ing the cap­i­tal needed is a daunt­ing and 360 degree chal­lenge. So, these Mumpre­neurs deserve pub­lic­ity and that we help spread the word about them. I also sim­ply feel extremely encour­aged and inspired, as they are liv­ing proof that they can be done! I hope they will inspire you as much.

Today, I would like to put Solvej Bid­dle in the spot­light. She’s a clas­sic Mumpre­neur and has built her busi­ness while rais­ing two chil­dren, now aged 6 and 4. She is the inven­tor behind Content&Calm Cot­Canopy, which already is sell­ing well in the UK mar­ket. The Cot­Canopy is a clever baby sleep solu­tion; con­sist­ing of a light-weight canopy  that you can mount over your baby’s travel cot, to cre­ate an instant night time feel­ing. It will allow your child to stick to its rou­tine and sleep well wher­ever you go. Check out the video where Solvej explains in her own words what the Cot­Canopy is all about. The awards and press cov­er­age has come rolling in dur­ing 2009, the Cot­Canopy is sold online and also stocked at some major UK retail­ers. Solvej is now busy with expand­ing into sis­ter prod­ucts such as a canopy for the car seat, and will expand into a full prod­uct range.

Solvej orig­i­nally had the idea for it in 2003 when she took her first child, Andrea-Anna, with her on trav­els and out­ings as a baby, and found her­self strug­gling to pro­vide a fit­ting and prac­ti­cal sleep­ing envi­ron­ment for her child. I’m sure you recog­nise the sit­u­a­tion: you are away at friends for din­ner on a summer’s evening and strug­gle with hang­ing up blan­kets for the win­dows to black­out the light. Or your baby wakes up at home in at 5 a.m on a summer’s morn­ing when the sun comes up, but nei­ther baby nor you has had any­where near the amount of sleep you need to feel rested. With the Cot­Canopy, this is no longer a chal­lenge, as the lit­tle one can enjoy his or her own per­sonal dark­ened and famil­iar envi­ron­ment, even when the lights are on or the room is light.

Obvi­ously, the Cot­Canopy first and fore­most helps to us as par­ents to pro­tect a lit­tle one’s pre­cious rou­tine and I think a reg­u­lar, good sleep is one of the num­ber one things we as par­ents all aim to pro­vide for our kids.

But impor­tantly, this prod­uct also has ben­e­fits for the rest of the fam­ily. It avoids putting every­one else in the room in the dark when baby needs a nap, and grants us that flex­i­bil­ity to travel or stay­ing with friends. In all hon­esty, at least I find that it does kind of took some of the fun out of the hol­i­day to turn out the lights at 19h30 while on hol­i­day, and spend the rest of the evening your­self fum­bling around a dark hotel room so that baby can sleep.

Now, that is my kind of prod­uct — it meets the needs of both the chil­dren and the adults in the fam­ily. It is use­ful, it has been designed to meet real needs. And it has been cre­ated and brought to mar­ket with pas­sion and perseverance.

That is inspi­ra­tional! Con­grat­u­la­tions and good luck Solvej.

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When brows­ing through my Google reader today, I stum­bled upon an irre­sistible pic­ture of the Noonie on Baby­gad­get.

The Noonie caught my eye as a smart and styl­ish baby swad­dle; designed and man­u­fac­tured by US Mumpre­neur and cre­ative designer Lalas Pequenos, based in Vir­ginia. It looks so cud­dly I almost feel inspired to try for another baby just to have an excuse to buy one.

Accord­ing to her pro­file, Lalas is the mother of two ‘very busy boys’ aged 7 and 8 and wants to cre­ate keep­sake, envi­ron­men­tally con­scious and entirely hand­crafted items which she sells online. What I was even more impressed by, how­ever, that this Mom not only man­ages her fam­ily as well as her busi­ness and makes gor­geous swad­dles. Along with her fam­ily and busi­ness part­ners, she also owns a 1500 acre pri­mary rain for­est in Costa Rica and a por­tion of all pro­ceeds from the Lala’s Pequeños line go to help pre­serve the Rain­maker Con­ser­va­tion Project.

In other words: she proves that Cor­po­rate Social Resposi­bil­ity is not a lux­ury, but also some­thing small busi­nesses can do. That is a word worth spreading!

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