Your Name Claire Mitchell
Business Name Chillipeeps Limited, a maker of attachable tops for water bottles
Type of Business Children’s Goods & Services
Business Location: Yorkshire, United Kingdom
Website www.chillipeeps.com
Twitter https://twitter.com/chillipeeps
Facebook http://www.facebook.com/Chillipeeps
Pinterest http://pinterest.com/chillipeeps/
Reason for starting
A moment of frustration, turned into a ‘Eureka’ moment. I was late setting of to a family party with my husband and beautiful baby daughter. I knew I had a carton of ready-made formula in the car but I couldn’t remember if I’d picked up a clean sterilised bottle. I asked my husband if he’d picked it up, he said I would have. I asked him to check in the baby bag as I would have to go home and get it. Whilst he clambered over the seats to check, I ranted, ‘Why hasn’t anyone invented a teat that attaches directly to the carton!’ We had the clean bottle, went to the party. Came out of the party 5 hours later, and I said ‘I can’t stop thinking about it, why hasn’t anyone invented anything that can attach directly to the carton?’ That night I researched the Internet, found there was nothing and decided I would!
How do you define success?
Success changes with every new goal, for me: Success has been producing a product from the original Eureka moment; Success is gaining awards and recognition for your product; Success is getting that product available to the public through retailers; Success is people buying and loving your product; Success is taking those that believed in you, with you on the journey; Success is paying back initial investment; Success comes from determined media to get the word out there; Success is when the company funded itself, after 4 years of R&D; Success will be when the ultimate and original goals will be completed of making our concept available to those that need us most in disaster areas; Success is making a difference to others. Success is giving back, through inspiring others to dream and believe that they too can achieve!
Biggest Success
Chillipeeps! I have never done anything like this before and here we are today with a multi-award winning global product. Genius!
What is your top challenge and how have you addressed it?
Definately cashflow, when we began I thought we’d be in the market in 6 months, so put everything on 0% credit cards, little did I know that most baby feeding products take 6 years to get to market! We begged and borrowed money along the 4 year R&D stage, the only great thing about that is I still own 100% of the company, a great position to be in now.
Who is your most important role model?
I don’t really have one role model, I am truly inspired by so many especially entrepreneurs as I now appreciate how hard they have worked. My role models would include: the Queen for the way she presents herself and has moved with and across the decades; Richard Branson for his acheivements and seeing gaps in markets and taking them; Oprah for overcoming obstacles publicly; and Roger Federer for his sportsmanship, professionalism and ‘nice guy’ image.