long time no see!

Well! It's been an awfully long time. Once again I'm prompted by a visit to Harrogate Nursery Fair to blog, but this time it isn't so much a round up of the good, the bad and the ugly (oh boy, the ugly!) as an apology for dropping the ball over here for so long. It's a funny old thing, blogging, it's meant to be about life, whether that's of an individual or some entity like a business or a charity, but then life gets in the way and writing stuff down doesn't seem as important as actually doing it. But then the lack of writing down means that the prompts and reminders, and the feedback, of course, are lost, and so sometimes the living gets a little lost too.

Anyway. Hopefully this is the return of a blog that's about the life of BabyArmadillo, and the life of BabyArmadillo continues to be worthy of blogging.

I'm not going to talk about any specific products from the show, I didn't see any awful howlers and the interesting new stuff, well you will have to see what happens there! It was lovely to chat with Victoria from the School of Babywearing about the European Babywearing Conference, which I will be attending with Babyidea, and Debi and Phil from Slumber-Roo, about the business of babywearing, and business generally, and fun to watch my friend Becky of Big Mama Slings in action in her other role as buyer for Born, with big thanks to The Little Green Sheep for the entertainment towards the end of the day and to Aden + Anais for the lovely welcome and the balm, very welcome for my lips on such a bitterly cold day!

Most of all, thanks to my customers, and to you for reading this today! Stay tuned for more news :-)

'Dillo and FBS day trip...

on Sunday, to the fabby trade show Harrogate Nursery Fair We got up nice and early on the morning after the clocks went forward (where's that bozz-eyed smiley??) and got there about 11am. Had a good mooch round, chatted with some people I've met before, poked and played with a lot of cool and not so cool stuff. Had a good long natter with Shani of SlingJax and NapsackBaby and dragged her off for an hour to look at all the different slings and carriers and other bits and bods too, much fun! Hopefully she's now having a well-earned rest, both her feet and her face will be tired from standing up and being nice to people for 3 days solid, lol. We were just about leaving when the 'The exhibition is now closed' message came over the tannoy! Can we chew the fat or what?!

What did we look at? And what did we think of it? Well...

There were a load of slings and carriers! Which is encouraging... Samsonite have a new range of bags for mothers, their 'Lady with a Baby' collection, which is stunning to look at, really made me go 'whoa!' from across the hall. Completely gorgeous, and the one for next year that was hiding in the 'back room' on the stand... mmm... While we were oo-ing and ahh-ing at those, we got a shufty at their front-pack. As front-packs go, this one has the usual limitations for the baby, but the way the straps work for the adults make it much more likely, in my opinion, to be comfortable for more people. The straps don't cross, they run straight down over the shoulders before being anchored to the waistband/lumbar support with a slight angle. This should stop the problem of straps riding up and cutting into the neck, this issue plagues me with MTs too, and I solve it in a similar way, I think they've been reading my forum posts ;)

TotsBots have a new 'arm,' TotsLife, with a clever 3-in-1 potty, changing bag and a carrier based on the stretchy wrap. A very interesting concept, needs a bit of tweaking really. Is going into pretty much direct competition with the Close Baby Carrier, in the 'let's make the stretchy wrap less intimidating' market. I think it will fit more people than the Close but the tweaks are important. I'll be keeping an eye out for a proper launch!

The 'Baby and All Bag' is an interesting thing. We were all set to really not like it but it's actually not all that bad. It's designed as a very short term 'emergency' carrier, so the narrowness of the panel that stops the child sliding forwards off the bag isn't so big a deal as it could be. It's a nifty solution for a common issue, really. But I'd like to see more of a seat and less of a 'dangling' effect.

Little Company had a carrier prototype, which, really beggars description! The best thing that I could see from it was the straps, the padding was cylindrical rather than flat so even if it does ride up to my neck it wouldn't cut in. Again I'll be watching out for a product launch.

The Belle Baby Carrier is another 'comfy for the adult' carrier, it's very very narrow in the seat though. And the leopard print does nothing at all for me.

Peanut Shell have some bling stretchy wraps, they're rather long! It was trailing on the ground and I hadn't tied it all that tight. I don't like the designs much but people do say life would be boring if everyone thought the same way.

There were other carriers, some front-packs, some others. Oh yes Napsack! Nice :-) Lighter weight than some, making it more flexible and smaller-packing. Can't say anything nasty about it, I'd get hurt ;-)

'Honourable mentions' for non-carrier products, lol...

The Poteez is a neat idea, a throwaway compostable one-use potty. They come in packs of 5, flat-packed cardboard. It pops up for use, has a self-adhesive panel to stick the lid down after use and can be chucked in the heap! Much greener than a throwaway nappy...

I really need to stock the iPlay swim nappy, if only because the distributors were giving away margaritas and peanuts on their stand, lol, oh and I've spent a good deal of time with them 3 times at shows now and not gotten round to ordering. (Hi Brendan, if you read this!!) The same company also distribute some very nice changing bags, something else I need to get round to stocking.

There was a neat tandem pushchair, the ICandy Pear I really like the adaptability of it. More compact than the Leebruss 'Zoom' though that does mean there's a bit less legroom for the back seat passenger I guess. Anyway, if you need a tandem, it's got to be worth a look.

Difrax do a neat training cup (scroll to the bottom) that doesn't bash the child on the nose! One of those 'oh that's so obvious' ideas... They also do bendy bottles that might be of interest to parents of bottle-fed babies who suffer with wind-intake, or ec-ers looking for a night solution for boys ;-)

Last but not least, I have to mention the DreamGenii maternity pillow. Mostly because Kirsty from FBS, who I dragged round the show, managed to blag one from their UK rep! Jammy so-and-so that she is...

All in all, an educational visit, as always. Lovely to meet people and chat stuff, play with a load of new toys, lol. Might just pull my finger out and have my own stand next year... ah, next year...

the hopeless blogger returns...

I was reminded last night what a hopeless blogger I am, and really what's the point of having a blog, and linking to it if you're not going to use it, right? So, here's a little update! We currently have a 'February Sale' on cold-weather babywearing acccessories at BabyArmadillo, along with our longer-standing reductions, and reductions on merino wool clothing at Fanny Fanackapants.

Babyidea have been busy bringing out a load of new products: the fabulous new 'art' eco wrap; new nappies and accessories including new pocket nappies, bamboo inserts, prefolds and flat multipurpose cloths and a cool new backpack-style nappy bag; a cute new range of organic cotton velour clothing made in conjunction with Fizzy Lemon, the German eco-friendly babywear brand.

Finally, we are at Little Ones Fair again in a couple of weeks time, it's always a busy event with lots of stuff going on, and we love to see our customers old and new in person!

I'll try to be a better blogger in future, honest...

it's funny what one finds at 3am...

I was fiddling about with a favicon for my new site, which I won't add the link to here since I'm having issues switching domain nameservers... there's always a reason why something is cheap... Anyway I found this nifty site that converts square bitmaps, gifs or jpegs into favicons, which if you don't know are the little pictures that you see on your tabs or bookmarks/favourites list that make it nice and easy to find the site you're after. V handy. I'm off for a browse round their gallery now...

Happy Easter!

Happy Easter! I hope today brings the promise of Springtime new beginnings :-)

I'm up at ridiculous o'clock due to my youngest taking herself up to bed for a nap at 7pm, we hadn't even had tea. And while I have lots of jobs to do, sometimes things take a bit more concentration than listening to Dora the Explorer at 2am will allow. Like comparing types of cloth nappy to decide what a realistic and sufficiently profitable RRP would be on the products one can import. Or writing an email in html to send out to previous customers. Blogging doesn't need quite that level of concentration :-)

The email is a bit of a summing-up of news, I'll put the link here when I can get it finished and uploaded. I hope it doesn't annoy anyone, when I haven't had an opt-in-or-out for a newsletter in the past. The setting of RRPs is so that I can distribute a wholesale price-list, which was the point of registering for VAT. I mean, it's pointless and actually could be expensive if it doesn't increase sales.

Another string to my bow will be setting up some local demonstration sessions. This should have been an integral part of the business from the beginning, and any new sling and natural-baby-care retailer really needs to figure out their niche and local interest, because generally-speaking, people like to see how things work and what they look like, especially when the type of product is unfamiliar. The people who know about slings and are confident with the internet already know what they're looking for and how to find it, but there aren't that many of those, and there are increasing numbers of retailers competing for that relatively small customer-pool.

Anyway, enjoy your day, chocolate-loaded or not *grin*

Happy Easter!

BabyArmadillo went to the fair...

I drove through the lifting mist and braved the traffic round Bradford this morning to get to Harrogate, to go to the Nursery Fair. Thought I'd have a look-see at what other people were doing and see if there were any interesting products that I wasn't aware of. In particular I was looking for anything sling-related, and something suitable to replace the Helly potties.

There were the usual pushchair, car-seat and cot brand-names. I had a look at the bebe-confort creatis, the car-seat we used for dd4, which now has a quick-fix base which I'm not convinced by... but then I never used ours as a travel system thing. I also had a look at the Britax CosyTot which is meant to have a support cushion of newborns so that they lie flatter and dont have the risk of breathing problems that can arise for particularly small and/or vulnerable babies, but the cushion's not as good as the one in the Creatis IMO.

I wandered round the cot stands, hoping to find a co-sleeper but sadly no. It surprises me really. But I did talk briefly to the woman from The Wool Company, they sell some lovely stuff including wool-filled duvets, really light and v warm apparently (I didn't lie down to test them! Think I would have been asleep, lol.) And this lovely lush underblanket. They go up to super-king-sized. Mmmmmm...

What else did I see? Oh yes...

• Baby Cubes which are clever little boxes designed for storing home-made baby food. Being a BLW-er I wouldn't want to use them for that but I will be suggesting them to Merry at BeadMerrily as bead sorting containers :-) Maybe they'd be useful for EBM too?


• Close Baby Carrier which looks great, organic cotton, lovely and soft, I like the adjustability thing :-)


• The Peanut Shell pouch and the lovely lush ju-ju-be bags from Jellybean, nice, but then so are Sleepytoes ;-)


• Great Kids Toys stock the Learning Tower which I've known about for a good while, rave reviews from unschoolers in the US, and the Knee Rider... has to be seen to be appreciated, lol!


• The PurFlo mattress. Dust mite free, like hammocks, and supports the baby's natural curvature, like hammocks :-)

There was more stuff but I either can't find the brochure I picked up and therefore can't remember what it was, or it's stuff I might be stocking in the future. Watch this space ;-)

a funny old week

I love it when we get repeat customers, but not so much when the products don't suit them for one reason or another. *sigh*

An enquiry came in for aluminium sling rings (an upcoming product and part of the MaM range) in lots of 1,000. My mind is completely blown that someone out there might be manufacturing 500 slings at a time. I want some of that traffic!!! Sadly we couldn't get the price quite low enough to meet the company in question's current supplier of nylon rings, boo :( The other major frustration has been the disappearance of a supplier, seemingly dropped off the planet entirely, this is not fun as it's one of our more popular products and I'm desperate to place another order!

But on the upside we may soon be offering local workshops and working with local play-gyms to demonstrate slings and carriers and promote babywearing, in conjunction with our 'neighbours' FrontBackandSides so if you're in the area watch this space! The shop is being twiddled with some more (I can't leave it alone, lol) and as the home-page says, there will soon be articles to read as well as the forum and this blog. As usual, if anyone has feedback or suggestions, please feel free to post a comment here or on the boards.

A good friend is in hospital next week for exploratory surgery. I don't want to go into details but I do want to wish her the very best possible outcome and experience. She really deserves an upturn in health fortunes!!

doncha just hate it...

when you dash round getting people organised to walk to the Post Office, just to see the van pulling away when you get there?! Ah the joys of the work-from-home parent...

Walked back through the village past an empty shop, which would be big enough to have a lounge space as well as display space for 'dillo stock. Over it is a flat, most likely big enough to house us all. Such a shame that it would be over dh's dead body for us to move there!

What we do

I thought, while I'm here already, I'd post an overview of what BabyArmadillo is about. BabyArmadillo was started while I was pregnant with our fourth daughter (not that we knew that she was a girl at the time!) because I wanted an Äiskä! I also knew that I wanted a Storchenwiege wrap. I saw the Äiskä on a forum thread and said to my long-suffering husband and business partner, "Do you think that if I emailed and said I was starting a baby-stuff business that they would send me one as a sample?"
He said, "Well you could, you know."
"I could what?"
"Start a baby-stuff business..."

And here we are, nearly 2 years later! Still selling Äiskä and Storch and we've gradually increased our range to include more slings, 'lactivism' clothes for babies and children, potties and baby hammocks. We focus on stocking items designed to help parents respond to their babies' needs in a timely way, so there won't be anything that encourages separation here. We're always on the look-out for new products to add to our range, so please add any suggestions and we'll look into them. You can also post on our forum.

Hello and welcome!

Welcome to the BabyArmadillo business blog. I'm going to use this space to share news about products, upcoming events and shop developments, show you pictures and videos of our products in action and hopefully get feedback on products and services that we currently offer and that you'd like to see in the future.

Please feel free to post comments, pass on the link etc.