Women In Business - Cuddledry Makes it Work for Mums
In a world where women juggle family life and work and struggle to do justice to either, I'm inspired by the story of two women that manage both - with phenomenal success. Just a stone's throw from Wincanton, in the sleepy village of North Cadbury, lies the vibrant heart of a successful international business run by mums and old friends Helen Wooldridge and Polly Marsh, founders of Cuddledry.
Cuddledry makes a unique baby bath towel that you wear as an apron. You may have seen them on TV's Dragon's Den, where they received three offers of investment, all of which they turned down! Before their eureka moment (watching their husbands struggle to bath and dry their young babies) their lives were very different. Polly used to be in the army and worked as a bomb disposal expert, while Helen worked in International Aid and spent time in relief camps in Afghanistan, before taking on a demanding marketing management role. Looking back a few years, both girls say they would have laughed if someone had said they would be running a fast-growing business selling baby towels - but what they are doing is such an inspiration for mums and women who want to get an idea going or work flexibly around family. 
And of course their product is all about making life easy for new parents - it is designed to totally take the stress out of bathing a tiny, slippery new baby, and they now sell thousands as a result!
Helen and Polly knew that they wanted to work for themselves and having children was the catalyst to change their lives and set up their own business - in fact the children were the inspiration for the business. They now both live in rural Somerset and run Cuddledry from there - a far cry from their former lives travelling around the world and living in huge cities like London and New York.
The girls each have three children (the eldest is six and the youngest is four months), so life is busy to say the very least. They decided to go for it with the apron towel idea but have always been determined to work around the needs of their children, so they work flexible hours to fit in with the demands of work and family. This ethos extends to the people that work for Cuddledry, too. They've created a structure which means all their team work flexible hours from home to suit them and the business. Wherever they do not have in-house expertise Cuddledry outsources the work, and those people work flexibly too - so everyone in the team can juggle the demands of their family, life or other work whilst also doing a great job for Cuddledry. With such a forward-thinking attitude as this it will hardly surprise anyone that Cuddledry won the prestigious award for Remote Employer of the Year in 2009.
They have also used the business - which now sells a whole range of towels and other products for babies and tots - to raise money for the Child Accident Prevention Trust and also for BLISS, the premature baby charity.
Helen and Polly had a very simple idea and turned it into a sound business with no previous experience whatsoever. "We find it funny when people refer to us as 'inventors', she laughs. We didn't use a professional designer when we were researching the Cuddledry idea. We sat on my lounge floor cutting up old sheets and testing out designs with teddy bears as 'babies'!" They are proud of the fact that it doesn't take a rocket scientist to come up with a good idea, and they are constantly advising and encouraging other women to go for it with business ideas, however simple.
Helen and Polly are honest about the highs and lows of starting up in business and dealing with it around family life as it grows. "We've made lots of mistakes ourselves," admits Polly, "but we've also received invaluable advice from others who know much more than us, and we're very happy to share our experiences and help if we can." It may have been a steep learning curve, but Cuddledry now sells its products in John Lewis, Mothercare, Harrods, Debenhams and many more - Helen and Polly's story is an inspiring one of friendship, family and turning a mad idea into a serious business. That they've managed to simultaneously grow a successful business whilst raising a young family - and enabling the rest of the Cuddledry team to do the same - is a precious achievement that other employers could do well to emulate.
You can see Cuddledry's award-winning baby bath towels at their website www.cuddledry.com.
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