Parents in Business featuring Kura Organics
Career

Parents in Business featuring Kura Organics

This week for my Parents in Business series I’m really excited to be featuring Kura Organics who create a snuggly cosy baby car seat wrap – see pic below, for parents to keep their baby snug whilst travelling. The business is run by three mums who are hugely passionate about the product, whilst creating something that is organic with 100% recyclable packaging. 

Kura Organics was set-up due to these passions, and also to create a business that was based around family and flexibility, isn’t this something that we are all trying to achieve? There have been some huge achievements whilst setting up the business, although it certainly sounds tough in the early stages trying to source a supplier who was GOTS certified, however both persistance and perserverance have paid off. So have a read of Kura Organics story below…

Tell me a little bit about you, your background, and your business?

Kura Organics was launched in August 2019, founded by three new and expecting mums: Amy Duffy, Kerry Greenwood and Victoria Oakley. They found the amount of safety advice about dressing babies in car seats very overwhelming. They created a baby car seat wrap to offer parents – including themselves – a hassle-free way to keep their babies cosy and warm when travelling. The Icelandic word Kura, directly translates to ‘snuggle’ which is a key feature of the product.

Environmental concerns have been at the forefront of the product’s development. The wraps are made using 100% GOTS certified organic cotton that is friendly to baby’s skin and the packaging is 100% recyclable with no plastics or chemicals.

Parents in Business featuring Kura Organics

What were your motivations for setting up your business?

Our concept was formed when, as mums ourselves (Amy Duffy and Kerry Greenwood), we found that ensuring our babies were a safe temperature when travelling was more difficult than we imagined. We understood the safety aspects with babies wearing coats and worried that blankets could easily fall off, or even end up over our baby’s head. This led to us identifying that there was a gap in the market for something cosy, stylish and practical for parents to nestle their little ones in when on the move. Our next step was to enlist Victoria who has extensive experience in childrenswear design, and together we brought the concept to life.

How do you balance the business around your family and childcare?

The reason we wanted to set up our own business was to ensure that it was centred around our families, to give us flexibility to look after our babies and work when they sleep… Although it isn’t always that simple! A lot of our business calls are done via Skype in the evenings when our kids are in bed and replying to emails on the go! It can definitely be quite challenging at times, but we wouldn’t change it for the world and we are very lucky to have our own little models for the Kura Organics photo shoots!

Since setting up your business what’s been your biggest success to date?

As a new business, we have constantly faced challenges and obstacles that we have had to overcome – and each time we have done so it has felt like our biggest success – so it is hard to pick just one. However, stepping back and looking at how far we have come, we all feel super proud to have launched our collection on time and to receive such positive initial feedback from our customers. Getting featured in nationwide publications and newspapers on the merit of our product has also felt like a real achievement for us.

What are your top tip for anyone who is thinking about setting up their own business?

Have patience and perseverance. When we began trying to secure a manufacturer that could provide us with GOTS-certified (Global Organic Textile Standard) organic cotton for our wraps we were faced with a number of challenges and found ourselves back at square one on numerous occasions.

We were determined to only use organic cotton, because is safer for baby skin, as well as for people living in cotton producing countries and the environment. Unlike regular cotton, it is grown without the use of synthetic fertilisers and pesticides, both of which are dangerous to human health and destructive to the environment.

We found it quite challenging to secure a relationship with a factory that could supply us with GOTS-certified organic cotton at the order quantity we felt appropriate for our first production run. GOTS-certified organic cotton ensures very strict guidelines are met from crop through to producing the product in the factory, therefore we felt very strongly that our product needed to be GOTS. Lots of suppliers we came across said their cotton was organic but couldn’t provide us with evidence of GOTS certification, we searched high and low to find a factory we were confident in and met all of our required standards.

This was quite a frustrating process. However, through sheer determination and perseverance we have successfully secured a trusted relationship with a manufacturer who meets all our ethical and quality standards. Subsequently, we have a great relationship with our key contact and communicate on a daily basis!

To find out more about Kura Organics visit the website or Twitter, Facebook and Instagram. Thank you so much for being part of my series, it has been an absolute pleasure to feature you on my blog.

If you like what you’re reading and would love to be part of my Parents in Business series just drop me an email: thepramshedblog@gmail.com. Or have a nose at some of the other businesses I have featured in the series: Haven’t Stopped Dancing YetAnisa Lewis – Postive Parenting, and 9-2-3 jobs.
Claire x

Leave a Reply

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

Spam prevention powered by Akismet