Designed by two Australian mums, Stacey and Lorraine, who spent a lot of time at the beach, Minnow Designs’ beach booties protect tiny feet from hot sand, sharp rocks and slippery bits.
Unable to wear flip-flops due to not yet having the coordination to do so, the two mums have a developed beautiful, purposeful product to ‘fill the gaps’ this summer.
Tell us about Minnow Designs.
Minnow Designs is the brainchild of two friends who have made it their mission to design beautiful, purposeful products that ‘fill the gaps’ in a parents life. We’re best known for our range of soft wetsuit beach shoes for toddlers in fun, colourful prints. We dreamed up the unique design for these booties when our firstborns started toddling through Australian seaside rock pools together.
At Minnow, we’re about small salty faces, sandy toddler bottoms, spontaneous fun, unhurried friendship, big belly laughs and rare moments of parental peace interrupted by frequent moments of breathless joy.
What inspired you both to start Minnow Designs?
We were at the beach with huge pregnant bellies, bags and these squirming toddlers who wanted to get down but the sand was so hot we had to carry them. Then in the rock pools we were having to be constantly vigilant about sharp rocks, shells and slippery bits. It did not make for a relaxing day!
We decided that someone needed to invent a wetsuit shoe with a soft sole specifically for toddlers that was non slip and not totally and completely hideous to look at. We needed something comfortable and malleable that would protect their little feet. Socks, but stronger and quick drying. The next day Lorraine went away and sketched up a design, contacted a factory and Minnow Designs was born.
Tell us about each of your careers and background.
Lorraine is a fashion designer with a specialist knitwear background. She was raised in Northern Ireland, studied knitwear design in Scotland and has worked for large fashion houses all around the world. She is also the founder of The Knit Space, which she runs out of Makers Space in Marrickville and which is rapidly making machine knitting cool again.
Stacey was raised in Sydney and spent 10 years in corporate marketing roles before founding Minnow Designs as well as a marketing agency, which provides lots of inspiration for new ways to grow Minnow.
We founded Minnow Designs in the summer of 2015 with a few thousand dollars, a thousand pairs of booties and Facebook ads & online Mums groups as our only marketing channel. We tested, tested & tested again and each month we’ve grown bit by bit.
Describe a typical work day at Minnow Designs
We actually only work together 2 days a week, on a Monday morning and then on a Thursday. This is time we commit to working ON the business – product development, big marketing activities etc. Every other day we are packing orders, answering emails and generally working IN the business. We still pack every order and answer every email ourselves. We are also fully self-funded so talking about cashflow takes up an awful lot of our time!
What advice do you have for those wanting to start a business?
Test your product before taking it to market. We learn something new about our product, our retailers, our packaging, our distribution, our manufacture our marketing & our sales process every single day. Also, don’t kid yourself that you can start up a business for free. We’ve been able to muddle along building websites and digital marketing campaigns ourselves but we’ve still had to pay for marketing and we’ve had to invest our own money into production.
What’s next for the two of you, and Minnow Designs?
Our focus for next year is to tackle the seasonality of our business by growing our distribution into the USA. We attended our first US trade show in Las Vegas in August and made lots of great contacts and learnings, which we’re rolling out in early 2018 ready for the Northern Hemisphere summer. We’re also looking to add some exciting new on-trend products to the range aligned with our mission to ‘fill the gaps’ in a parents life via clever product design.
To find out more about Minnow Designs, visit https://minnowdesigns.com.au.
