At the beginning of everything stood attachment parenting, with which comes the belief that children do not belong in a separate crib, but should sleep together with their parents in the marital bed.
“But with my first son, there was a fall from the marital bed, because beds in our conditions are not adapted for co-sleeping. I then started looking for a solution to prevent such situations. I only managed to discover the right product, namely a special barrier for a large marital bed, a few months later,” says the friendly blonde, now a mother of two small children on parental leave.
During her search, Lucie Janauer was very surprised to find that there was no such product on the Czech market and she found nothing similar in neighboring European countries either. In the end, after a longer search, she found the product of her dreams on a non-European market (she does not want to reveal more about the manufacturer). But the shipping cost was so high that she decided to order in bulk right away.
“I guess my entrepreneurial instinct kicked in; I told myself I’d definitely sell the barriers in the Czech Republic and that it would be a shame not to buy more,” explains the entrepreneur, who ordered sixty of them straight from the manufacturer. “It was a risk, but I felt it would work,” she says to me. She also had to convince her husband that she would invest all her own savings into this order, money she had set aside for renovating the kitchen.
The risk paid off, because these bed barriers literally sold like hotcakes. “I sold them through Facebook in a group I created, and they were gone in about a month,” recalls Lucie Janauer, whose excitement over parents’ interest in this aid for so-called co-sleeping led her to decide to build a business around it.
“I signed an exclusive contract with the supplier for sole representation on the European market and set up an e-shop,” she continues, describing how she took another risk. Under the contract, she had to commit to buying a large quantity of products and, of course, she needed money.
With a child in a sling, she went around banks saying she had a unique product and wanted a business loan. But no one believed her; everyone wanted to see the history of a company that did not exist. “I kept thinking, I have a great product, doesn’t anyone see that?” the energetic woman laughs today about her enthusiasm.
The first hundreds of thousands to launch the business were eventually lent to her by friends and a friend’s mother. Gradually, the first real investors joined them as well: Lucie Janauer now owns seventy-five percent of the company, with the rest held by partners. Entrepreneurs Ivo Kramoliš and Matěj Turek invested one million crowns in the company and now own more than ten percent of it; additional shares were later acquired by the investment company Eskalator, which put 1.3 million crowns into Monkey Mum.
And so Lucie Janauer launched a large and rapidly growing business. Even the coronavirus pandemic, during which she founded her company Monkey Mum (the name Monkey Mother refers to attachment parenting), did not stop her.
She launched the e-shop in August 2020 and for 2020 reported a turnover of half a million crowns. For 2021 it was already 5.4 million, and last year the company grew by 400 percent to a turnover of twenty-three million. For 2023 it has so far sold goods worth twenty-five million crowns and is targeting forty to sixty million by the end of this year. She does not want to disclose EBITDA profit, but she says the entire time she has been in business the results have been slightly positive.
After three years in business, Monkey Mum now has 25 permanent employees, and Lucie Janauer herself serves as CEO and handles all important matters. “I work a lot and sometimes it’s difficult with small children, but I’ve confirmed for myself that no one will do my work the way I imagine it,” the entrepreneur shrugs, investing almost all the money she earns back into the company.
“We want to keep growing,” explains Janauer, who already supplies special bed barriers across all of Europe, which she considers her biggest success. And she plans to move into the American market as well. Most of her products today are sold abroad: exports make up sixty-five percent of total turnover.
The core of her business is still children’s barriers: she has had the product improved and refined so that it meets her requirements. She also raised its price; the most expensive barrier now costs 2,290 crowns. But the price increase apparently had no effect on sales.
“Competition in the Czech Republic in the field of children’s products is fast, and companies have appeared that offer similar products at a better price, but our sales have not been affected at all; we are still growing. We deliver adequate quality to customers for our price,” says the twenty-nine-year-old mother, who in addition to barriers also sells other products for children that are in line with attachment parenting and sustainability: for example various carriers and clothing.
Lucie Janauer says she learned how to run a business only in practice while building Monkey Mum, but it grabbed her so much that, according to her, this is definitely not her last project. “I have several more ideas in my head that I want to launch,” she says in conclusion
Source: https://forbes.cz/nesehnala-zabranu-pro-dite-do-postele-tak-na-ni-postavila-milionovy-byznys/
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