Here at the urbanmoms.ca Marketplace, we pride ourselves on bringing you the stories of moms making their way in the world as entrepreneurs. This week, we bring you Gwen’s story:
I am the owner of a brand new online store called Nayla Natural Care. The name Nayla comes from my 2 daughters, Naomi and Jayla, who were my inspirations for the store. I am located in Ottawa, but ship to all of Canada and the US.
In a nutshell, my husband and I feel strongly about using organic and all natural products on ourselves and our children. We found that the easy to find products weren’t so natural or organic after researching product ingredients. So we found that to get the good stuff, we were ordering some things online, driving out to a health store 30 minutes away from home to get other things, going to another store to get other stuff…it just became a hassle getting the products we needed each week, especially with 2 young children. So I decided that if we feel this way, there must be other parents in the same boat, so I decided to make my own "One Stop Shop" with everything you need for your family. I have started out with only products for pregnant, breastfeeding and postpartum mom as well as for baby and children, but I do have plans to carry products for men and then everyday products for women. I have already decided on most of the future lines, and am very anxious to introduce them in the near future.
Something unique about our store is that I have assembled a group of mom and children testers (I call them my Nayla Testing Team!) and we tried out all the products that I was interested in carrying in the store. I’d say about 95% made it in, just a few didn’t for various reasons. Everything is tested and approved before I make the decision to carry it.
One of my favourite lines lines is definitely TruKid. TruKid is an all-natural children’s line from the US. It was founded by a fellow mom. They have a fabulous line of products that are non-toxic, paraben and phthalate free, and all of our testers who tried this line loved it. Including me of course! TruKid is quite popular in the US and is just starting to show up in Canada. We are one of the first retailers to carry this line (in Canada). They have a great sunscreen lotion and sun stick for the face that are both really popular. I am carrying their entire lineup of products
Another line is The Green Beaver Company. I am carrying some wonderful Flouride free toothpastes both for children and adults as well as a great massage butter for babies and a soothing nursing balm for breastfeeding moms. This company has so many other products I want to carry and will in the future.
I also carry BPA free baby and water bottles, bibs, placemats as well as quite a few other great products.
Hi Gwen,
Congratulations on your new store!
I too, am an entrepreneurial mom – I have 3 children, although only one still lives at home with us.
Our website publishes stores like yours and receives commissions on any sales you make through us. We are Canadian as well but we feature stores from other countries as well, mostly the US. We try to find stores that ship to at least these 2 countries and frankly have the hardest time finding online and ready to do business Canadians which we would love to do more business with.
We work with affiliate programs, they are the middlemen between the publishers and the stores, they provide the links/tracking code and do the financial payouts. There are many on the market – if you are interested in joining up with them, I can give you some names. Some are expensive to work with, others are more affordable. Some stores do their own affiliate programs, but you need to devote a lot of time to that effort if you choose to go that route.
Anyway, good luck and if you wish to ask me more feel free to do so.
Karen