Usually, a fall ends a business. Lucie Janauer’s baby fell out of bed, and when she looked for something to protect him from another fall, she found only a gap in the market. The founder of the Monkey Mum e-shop started with a borrowed million and the belief that she would sell at least 60 bed guards. Now she sells them in eight countries and is preparing to go overseas. The interview with the entrepreneur is also brought to life by her investor and mentor František Zeman from the IT company Algotech.
When did you decide to start the e-shop?
Lucie Janauer (LJ): In August 2020. The idea for Monkey Mum came from personal experience. My son — still a baby — fell out of bed. I was looking for some kind of protection and found that there was no similar product on our market. After thorough research, I found suitable guards abroad. I told myself that if no one here offered them, there would definitely be at least 60 people who would buy them. And I found a gap in the market.
The real start of the business was an investment from a friend of my mother’s, who lent me one million crowns; banks were refusing me at the time. And then I started looking for more investors. Today we have three main ones.
One of them is also the CEO of Algotech, František Zeman. How did you manage to get such a partner?
LJ: František joined Monkey Mum as an investor in spring 2022, based on a recommendation from business partners. At first he was very strict and brought a completely different view of business. At our very first meeting, for example, he criticized me for not being able to find our main product, children’s bed guards, on our website. Now we laugh about those beginnings together.
And how does František Zeman himself remember it?
František Zeman (FZ): When Lucie approached me, I hesitated. From my point of view, the business was ready to be shut down. I no longer remember exactly what finally convinced me; probably Lucie’s sincere enthusiasm. Or the fact that Matěj Turek (investor and owner of a minority stake in Algotech — ed.) also invested in the project. Matěj has a very good instinct for successful startups. But we had to intervene decisively and put accounting, reporting, internal processes and sales in order. The processes weren’t set up at all, and the company would probably have gone under soon. But no successful entrepreneur fell from the sky, and every fuck-up is not only an opportunity to learn, but directly a necessary experience, the key to further growth.
Was the e-shop successful from the start?
LJ: I started from zero, with a minimal budget for Facebook ads. But a week after sales launched, the first order came in, and then things started to snowball. The original 60 guards sold faster than I expected. In the first year we reached monthly revenue of around 70,000 crowns. I had to learn to carefully monitor the numbers and cash flow. On top of that, I had a small child and, while building the company, I was pregnant with my second. The company is like my third child. Fortunately, I have a team I can rely on.
How many people do you manage now?
LJ: At the beginning, a friend helped me; later we hired our first part-time employee for customer support. Today we employ five people full-time, two seamstresses, and for each country we have an external translator for customer support and translations. We also use freelancers for marketing and logistics. We have our own office, because I believe personal contact is important — I have bad experiences with home office, and I want the team to stay together and people to communicate face to face.
How quickly did you break into foreign markets?
LJ: Expansion started practically immediately. The Czech Republic is no longer even our main market — we are in eight countries, including Germany, Spain, Poland, Hungary, Slovakia and Romania. We tested the market in sixteen countries and plan to return.
Every country has its own specifics. For example, Spaniards communicate a lot via WhatsApp, Germans are more formal, and Scandinavians are usually non-confrontational and expect a high level of service. Strategically, we decided to operate locally, which is why we apply for VAT registration in each country. Ironically, the most demanding part of expansion is always translating the website for each market; that takes about a month.
The European market for products like yours is being flooded by the e-shop Temu. How do you perceive competition from China?
FZ: Competition is a natural engine of progress. When we have no one to compete with and compare ourselves to, we stop developing. Of course, unfair competition is another matter, but that’s not the case here. It’s like when we go to a restaurant. The first thing most of us look at is the right-hand column with prices, not the ingredients of the dishes. But we chose a different path. We bet on quality and a personal approach, and that’s a strategy that has paid off for us in the long run.
LJ: We’re actually not that interested in the competition — we focus on our own development. We simply can’t compete on price with big players like Aliexpress or Temu, so we mainly build the brand. We want to be the e-shop where parents find everything they need around motherhood. We build on customer experience and support. That’s why, for example, we created a loyalty program and want to build a community of Monkey Mum customers and friends. Our big advantage is that we offer certified products, which e-shops from China can’t do.
Do you plan to expand outside the European Union as well?
LJ: I see great potential in expanding to the USA. But expansion doesn’t have to be only regional — we support sports and active leisure, so we also want to grow into the segment of outdoor activities with children.
Artificial intelligence is becoming part of almost every company today; is that true for you as well?
LJ: We believe in a combination of technology and a human approach. Artificial intelligence helps us with routine tasks, but we understand the importance of the human factor. We use technology mainly to make processes more efficient, but never at the expense of service quality. We see potential in customer support, where artificial intelligence works very well.
Could you be more specific?
LJ: We believe in live customer support — although we do have a chatbot that handles about one tenth of the repeating questions. But it is still important that a person can get through to a live operator if needed; for safety products for children, personal contact is especially irreplaceable. Our customers are mostly women and often need advice on choosing or installing products.
FZ: Although I come from the IT world, where the trend is to automate everything, what interested me about Monkey Mum was precisely the human approach. I’m convinced that in some areas live customer support is irreplaceable. When a mother needs help choosing a bed guard for her child, no chatbot will give her the same care as an empathetic person. Even large companies that originally wanted to automate everything are returning to human contact. And I see a big opportunity in that. There’s also the specific nature of our product — a mother doesn’t buy a bed guard ten times in her life, so it requires perfect customer service right from the very first time.
What are the biggest threats you see in your business?
LJ: Honestly? That I’ll burn out! Sometimes I really do have crises, because there’s a lot going on. I’m learning to delegate as I go, which isn’t easy. Of course there are also the classic business risks — above all financial ones. One mistake can mean we run out of resources. That’s why we prefer to grow gradually and cautiously. But now I feel it’s time for a bolder step. I’m considering a big TV campaign that could help us jump to the next level. And then there are the usual operational risks like network outages or natural disasters. But those are things you can prepare for. It’s much harder to keep your energy and enthusiasm up in the day-to-day running of a company.
FZ: Looking at it from an investor’s position, the biggest risk is always people. Specifically in Monkey Mum, the biggest threat would be if Lucie stopped enjoying it — a situation like that is practically impossible to save. When a founder loses drive, the company loses its soul. Technology, the market environment and other external factors are more secondary. People are, and always will be, key. That is the cornerstone of success and also the biggest potential threat.
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