Breastfeeding is one of the top priorities for all new moms.
Human breast milk is biologically designed to meet a baby’s nutritional needs, and doctors often recommend breast milk rather than feeding with formula.
However, with our busy lifestyles, it’s not always easy to pump and store enough breastmilk.
You also have to think about your diet and how your own food allergies may affect your baby’s nutrition and overall health.
Myorganiccompany.store is helping new parents fight this challenge by providing 100% organic formulas for babies.
To learn more about their business, we spoke with Cecilia, founder of My Organic Company.
1. What’s the story behind My Organic Company? What inspired you to start this business?
Let me start off with my personal story:
When my daughter was first born, my top priority was to exclusively breastfeed her for the first year of her life.
Even though I knew I had a military commitment and obligation during that first year, I was going to pump up enough breastmilk to keep her on my milk (or so I thought). About three months into her life, she broke out in extreme rashes and eczema, and she was miserable.
The doctors said it was probably allergies, so they conducted a blood allergy test. And it showed she was allergic to everything.
Obviously, this put a wrench into my plans. Since the test didn’t really help narrow down the main problem, the doctors told me in order to keep breastfeeding I had to cut out all those food as well.
I’m a strong woman, but cutting out eggs, wheat, rice, and dairy was…. hellacious. I lasted a month. And of course, my breast milk supply had significantly dropped from the stress and anxiety included.
At this point, I was forced to place her on the store-brand formula. I was miserable. I felt like a miserable mom that had failed my daughter.
Fast forward years later, and once again the military takes me away from my three-month-old son now (for a few weeks, and not months like my daughter).
This time I had milk saved up, but my extended family had misconceptions that my milk was causing his colic. So they dumped it! And gave him store-bought formula found on the shelves here in America.
Needless to say, my experience with the store-brought formula has caused extensive anxiety in my life, including that terrible mom-guilt. But why?!
Because there are many formulas sold in America full of ingredients that have been banned by the EU for years already! Now, it has gotten better over the years, especially since my daughter (now 8) was a baby. But it still lacks the oversight like the EU provides for their organic baby formula.
This inspired my husband and me to own a business that sells formula with the absolute best ingredients. With brands like HiPP, Holle, Kendamil, Lebenswert, and Loulouka, I feel very comfortable with promoting these amazing products.
In fact, my sister-in-law and also my best friends are using our newest and favorite formula, Kendamil on their little girls.
2. Your website mentions MyOrganicCompany WonderMom Scholarship – what inspired this initiative and do you have any stories that you can share where the scholarship helped improve someone’s life?
Before I met my husband, I was a single mom raising my girl. In this time, I went through many struggles and worked very hard to still be successful and be a role model for my daughter.
This is near and dear to my heart. As such, when we started talking about giving back in our business I immediately thought about helping other moms that have had to go through the struggles of being a single parent and I knew this was the cause we should support.
So far we have been able to help one single mom – we have shared her story on the scholarship page.
Every month I check in with her and see what progress she is making. She is doing fantastic with her grades and I am so excited to keep hearing her story as she touches many other women’s lives when she graduates.
3. What were some of your biggest challenges when building your business and how did you tackle them?
I think the biggest challenge at first is time management. When we bought this business we had a colicky baby, and I was trying to be a stay-at-home/work-from-home mom while taking care of him and growing the business.
At the same time, my husband had just returned to his full-time job (off from paternity leave) and he was trying to build the business while returning to full-time work.
Even now, managing time around raising a family is difficult, but it has gotten better. And naturally, the other biggest challenge is learning the industry.
We spent quite a bit of time learning about eCommerce prior to owning our business, but it still doesn’t fully prepare you for when you finally have the business.
4. What piece of advice would you give to those who’ve just started their online business?
There is so much to learn, especially in advertising and growth.
We both spend time every week to keep learning about the industry and how we can grow – and I think every strong business owner should do this as well.
If you aren’t learning, you aren’t growing!
5. What are the future plans for My Organic Company?
Growth, growth, and more growth! We have already grown the business 4X from when we first began, and we are not finished.
We are dedicated and passionate about our product, and knowing that what we provide to parents is better than what is found here in America keeps us driven.
We would love to become the educational source for parents with all their formula questions as well. And have more of a community for our customers, so they can share their stories, ask questions, and laugh together.
We started a FB group recently for this purpose.
6. Why did you choose a .STORE domain name and how has it helped you build a great brand?
Well, we purchased the company with the .STORE domain – so we didn’t really have a choice in that. But I think our customers are able to quickly identify that with our .STORE domain we are here for their shopping needs!
