Cool Maternity Clothes - Meet Sally Hainey Of Sweet Lilly Maternity
By sandy.naidu | Category: Maternity Clothes - Baby Care ProductsIf you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!
| My guest today is Sally Hainey. Sally Hainey is based in Australia and her business success story is very inspiring. Sally Hainey is the owner of internet based business, Sweet Lilly Maternity– an online Australian store positioned at the forefront of maternity fashion. Her online store is full of cool maternity clothes. “The store is still in its first year of infancy and our strategy is very simple: to give customers exactly what they want – world class bright, edgy, stylish maternity wear that is affordable with a ‘free shipping’ bonus. In essence, we are the best and only place to shop for cool maternity wear imported from overseas.”The speed of our success has really surprised us”, she adds. | ||
| “There is a winning formula to promote online businesses and we think we’ve just about nailed it. You certainly can’t afford to just sit back and wait for your orders to roll in ‘cos it just won’t happen. You have to be really proactive and work extremely hard on PR and marketing. That means putting in some serious hours and when you have a young child to look after, a house and husband, then it can take some serious juggling and a very determined mindset. | ||
 |
Our business has grown so much that we are now about to take on additional staff to attend to customer queries and the packaging of their goods, and another person to handle the wholesale side of the business. This leaves me with more time to concentrate on new product development, marketing and PR. We’re certainly in this for the long haul!” | |
| Tips to grow your business | ||
 |
Stay at home mummies with young businesses are usually women that have enjoyed a great corporate career and have chosen to have their children and do something for themselves whilst the children are little. Its becoming quite a popular choice for a lot of women and if you go to networking groups like, ‘Business Women Connect’ you will see other like minded women doing the same thing. Lots of businesses are springing up to help like minded women with their new business ideas. |
|
| One such business that we use is www.madamemarketing.com.au an online marketing program run by marketing expert, and successful business owner Sharon Tieman. Sharon shows the importance of marketing and can offer help and advice to make it work for your business. Sharon is my business mentor and a very wise woman. We meet regularly to chew over ideas for the business and I always leave our meetings full of energy, enthusiasm and a ‘to do’ list. | ||
| So what is a typical day in the life of ‘Sweet Lilly Maternity?’ |
||
 |
As much as I love my daughter, she goes to kindergarten three times a week and we’re really happy with this compromise. It gives me enough time to cook up some serious deals on the business, manage the other girls and still give my daughter some quality time for playing. And she is so happy there with her friends. I’m also a big believer in networking, so I make time to attend the networking meetings and lunches with Business Women Connect here in Terrigal, Newcastle and Sydney.The business has now outgrown our beachside home in Terrigal on the NSW Central Coast so we now have separate business premises and warehouse but before then, I would have a policy where no housework was to be done after 9.00am! Otherwise, you just don’t get any serious work done! Work for me stops at 4.00pm when I go to collect my little girl from Kindy, but I leave the other girls to complete the orders, visit the post office and brief the couriers. | |
| Where do you go from here? | ||
|
|
We’ve been inundated with requests to open a maternity store or studio so we’re chewing over the possibilities there. The importing side of the business is going fantastic and we’ll probably develop that into a separate branch of the business. The online store is going incredibly well but there are still areas for improvement, so we’ll keep working that. And maybe there might be time for another baby ….. | |
| Sites Of Interest | ||
| Visit Sally’s website to get more information about her cool maternity clothes business | ||
| This interview was published on 28th June 2007 | ||
| To read more stories about women in hip maternity clothes and natural baby care products businesses click Cool Maternity Clothes | ||
Stumble Upon
Del.icio.us
Buzz