Gemma Whates, founder of All By Mama, explains why the business should win the Startup of the Year category of the Guardian Small Business Showcase competition:
Launched in November 2014, All By Mama was founded after the birth of my first son. With a career in marketing I had worked hard to achieve and a new love in my life, I was torn when the time came to go back to work. I wanted to have both a career I was passionate about and the ability to be around for my son.
All By Mama is a community and marketplace featuring creative mums who manage their business around family life. Our vision is to provide a global sales and networking platform for our ‘Mamas’. We offer our Mamas a platform to sell their products, an advice and support package to help grow their business, access to a network of like-minded mums and membership to our children’s club.
To date, we have 180 Mamas in our community and over 20,000 ‘fans’ across our networks. We’ve successfully built a brand that our Mamas and customers are emotionally engaged with and feel strongly about supporting. We’ve learnt as we’ve grown and changed our business model to include a subscription fee, making us profitable more quickly. We’ve secured our first round of investment by selling the vision and opportunity for the brand. We’ve grown to a team of 5, all working remotely and flexibly. This way of working is at the very heart of our business and has also allowed us to minimise costs. We’ve got a big vision and are passionate about supporting flexible working for parents.
All entries which meet the competition criteria are published and our judging panel select a shortlist of the top three for each category. Winners are announced at an awards ceremony in summer 2016.
