Wednesday 27 August 2008

New Spanish online store - www.indybel.com


A new online store for pregnancy and baby in Spain has just been launched! Indybel specialise in British and International pregnancy and baby products as well as innovative and organic products for pregnancy, birth and beyond … and it is owned and run by two Mums who met on MumsinSpain.com! How great is that. Please support Sam and Lesley by checking out their website http://www.indybel.com/

The story of Indybel

Indybel was set up by Sam and Lesley who met last summer via mumsinspain! Here is their story in their own words. “Firstly it has to be said that our company Indybel would never have existed without mumsinspain.com! Our daughters are roughly the same age and we live near each other, and so via Claire’s website we became friends and baby confidents. A while after we met we found that a lot of our conversations were taken up with moans and groans about baby products we wanted to buy but couldn’t find here in Spain. We both relied heavily on friends and family bringing things over from the UK and we knew many others here who were in the same situation. That was October 2007 now nearly 11 months later http://www.indybel.com/ (named after our daughters India and Isabella) is finally here! Starting a business with two small (often grumpy) toddlers in tow has not been easy! In fact as they have got older it has become more difficult as our girls need more entertaining and we need more time to work. We have found working with babies to be a completely unpredictable experience, one day they’ll happily play together for hours on end, needing hardly any attention and we can sit at the laptop and smile over at our wonderful daughters, the next they act as if they can’t stand each other and cling to our ankles as if we were the meanest, least affectionate mums in the world. At times like these it’s almost impossible to work properly and we have come to realise that starting a business in Spain is all the harder because often there is less extended family around to support you and those that are here work full time. Aside from the complexities of actually setting up an SL company our main challenges have included the logo design, website design and deciding what we can afford to sell as opposed to what we would really like to sell! Choosing products has been really exciting. We started off with a wish list and changed our minds about a lot of products which were either too expensive and we felt wouldn’t sell, or weren’t quite what we were looking for. We have always been very clear about our aim, which is to offer the types of products that we have found we have needed over the last 18 months but just couldn’t find here in Spain, as well as a good organic range. As our babies grow we find there are more things we need ourselves and so we are adding products with experience! ( right now we are going through toilet training! ) We went to the Baby Show in London last year and found some brilliant new products and Lesley ( while pregnant with number 2 !) has managed to find the time and energy to pop over to Thailand twice to source manufacturers, suppliers and products for our own brand items! We are hoping to visit two more UK trade shows this October in order to continue to be able to offer the most up to date, exciting and innovative products on the site. There is so much still to do and most of our days are spent juggling babies, emails, meetings and whenever possible grabbing just a few minutes here and there researching on the net. But despite the sleepless nights, having to take our babies to meetings, working into the small hours once they are sleeping and the ongoing fear it could all be a huge disaster and we might be bankrupt this time next year, it’s been so exciting to launch our business and right now, we wouldn’t change a thing!!” Sam and Lesley

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