Mumpreneur Profiles: Katy and Laura of LittleStuff

Almost five years to the day after their launch, LittleStuff is finally flashing a new ankle at its browsers. Amidst all the doom and gloom, they are a tale of success – with over 200 companies listed on the site, their witty, honest and knowledgeable reviews are on the regular read lists of net-mums-who-know; they are often called on by features editors to provide filler items and images at the last minute, and they are much loved by some of the top names in the nursery industry (and by many of the tiny fabulous boutiques too)… and run by two mums who have only ever met twice, and who very rarely speak.

Laura Hitchcock

Laura Hitchcock – married to Courtenay and mum to Cameron (10), Joe (7), Toby(6) and Ella (2) -and Katy Owen, married to Peter and mum to Jacob, 6, and Ben, 2 – met for the first time just 6 months ago when LittleStuff founder Laura and her family made the 160 mile journey from Dorset to Northamptonshire to stay with Katy and her family. “It was mad – we’d never really met, and yet it was completely natural, like we’d only had coffee the day before!” smiles Katy.

The two mums have been ‘cyber-friends’ since they met on a parenting website birth board in 2002, Katy pregnant with her first son and Laura with her third. Katy joined LittleStuff 18 months after Laura had set it up, and combining their skills has seen LittleStuff leap forward, increasing its traffic to the current 9,000 visitors a month.

Katy Owen

 ”The business day starts and ends with iChat,” admits Laura. ‘We have a constant conversation running every single day, picking up and leaving off whenever necessary as we juggle the business around school runs and toddlers and laundry and the like.”

With its fresh and innovative ‘kitchen table’ look, the new LittleStuff is a huge step for the pair. Not only is it entirely different to anything else in the market, but for the first time they have moved away from a web design company. The new site is entirely designed and run by the pair themselves ‘It’s terrifying!’ laughs Katy, who is in charge of All Things Technical “we no longer have a grown up to run to if it breaks!”

The pair both have backgrounds in IT, so it wasn’t a huge leap into the unknown – more taking back the control, and was the next logical step.

 ”Designing it was exhilarating, actually,” continues Laura (in charge of All Things Design) “we knew that eventually we had to simply stop worrying about what we ‘should’ be doing with the site, and design it just for ourselves. Because at the end of the day, we are our own target market.”

And sure enough, the instant feedback has been enormously enthusiastic. Still covering the task of helping busy parents to find what they need as fast as possible, new visitors just can’t help stopping longer than they expected, simply to discover the hidden secrets on the home page, read the latest reviews and just have a mosey round the site. As the home page says: ”Come, pull up a chair, here’s a cuppa…”

This entry was posted on Saturday, June 27th, 2009 at 9:00 am and is filed under Mumpreneur Profiles, online mums. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.