This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.
The mom box subscription box expands to a popular service. Hey, friends, what's up? Welcome to Side Hustle School. It's Chris Guillebeau, your host. Today is the episode segment known as Throwback Thursday. We get to take an in-depth look at someone whose story has evolved considerably
since we first featured them. Let's see, last week we heard from Dave Green, Mystery Trip. He's running Mystery Trip experiential events for corporate groups, team building, and so on. Before that, we heard from Jake Pascoe, running the best guitar lessons in the universe. Today, we're going to go to Kate Westervelt. She's the founder of this company called Mombox.
Mombox has actually grown quite a bit. I'll have a couple of updates after the updates, so she's going to share some updates and I will share a couple of others. But in short, Kate went from frustrated new mom who felt that her needs after childbirth weren't being cared for to CEO of a growing startup that promised and committed to do exactly that. So let's hear a bit about Mombox, some updates from when we first featured Kate. I'm going to pass the microphone to Kate Westervelt. I'll be back at the end with a few words of wrap up. Hi, my name is Kate Westervelt
and I'm the founder and CEO of Mombox.com, located in Southern New Hampshire. I was previously featured on episode 915 back in July of 2019. I got started after the birth of my son Noah back in 2016. Less than 72 hours after giving birth to him, I found myself waddling around the store aisles looking for products that would help me heal. So when you're in the hospital, they give you a bunch of freebie products to help your recovering body, but I hadn't prepared any of those products at home. And so on the way home from the hospital, I stopped at
Target. I went in and was just really underwhelmed by the product selection on store shelves at that time. So there I was, hormonal, sleep deprived, and in pain waddling around the aisles of Target. And I quickly realized that despite all of the preparations for my son's arrival, my own postnatal needs had gone neglected. I knew in that moment there had to be a better way to care for myself and for new moms everywhere. I immediately recognized the power of the convenience economy
and a major gap in the market where robust directed consumer postnatal support should exist. What started as a labor and delivery recovery kit has evolved into an all-encompassing singular destination designed to help new moms navigate the first full year of motherhood. Mombox is my main hustle. My full-time job, I couldn't be happier. There's a lot of meaning in the work we're doing to help mothers out there navigate that first year of motherhood. Prior to Mombox, I worked in
publishing in New York and I held similar roles at large e-commerce companies up here in Boston. Since I was last on the show in July of 2019, Mombox introduced the world's first 12-month postnatal subscription box that provides new moms with critical monthly support at home and on demand after the birth of a child. So we recently launched and we're off to the races. Mombox started as a single labor and delivery recovery kit and has evolved into an all-encompassing destination for new moms. In addition to the all-new monthly subscription, Mombox has also introduced the breastfeeding support box aimed at helping mothers navigate the common difficulties associated with breastfeeding. We have also opened up our own 5,000 square foot warehouse
in southern New Hampshire. So we manage all of our own kitting and fulfillment and we've grown the team to about 10 employees. So we continue to grow and scale. The advice I would give to someone who wants to follow in my footsteps would be to absolutely do it, to take the leap, become the solution to something you're missing, fill a gap in the market with something that enhances your life and could also benefit others. Becoming a mom inspired me in so many ways, including the concept of Mombox. So I would say believe in yourself. Prior to Mombox, I was never a CEO, but here I am
a CEO. So I think it's important to note that at Mombox over 80% of our product curation comes from female or BIPOC founded companies. So we're really committed to putting cash back in the pockets of other female and BIPOC founded companies. That's super important to our ethos and our brand mission. We're fully committed to caring for mothers across as many postpartum topics as possible. So that the
next generation of mothers and the generation after that continue to expand conversations and resources that lead to happier and healthier moms. All right. Well, I promised some updates after the updates. And in fact, since we last heard this update from Kate, her business has been acquired. So she actually grew Mombox into this e-commerce brand with over a hundred plus brand partnerships in the end. And Mombox was successfully acquired
in the fall of 2023. She then took a year off to earn an MBA, do some other stuff. So here's a great example of a side hustle that started without a ton of resources that grew, that she made some really smart decisions and in fact was able to have it acquired. That's not the goal of a lot of our side hustlers. A lot of people just want to run their own thing and make extra money.
They're not trying to build a huge company, but it's pretty cool to have that option. Right. And so Kate made some smart choices, I think, in building the business to build it in a way in which it could be acquired. So we might talk some more about that in another episode. But for now, Mombox is still going. She's just not running it herself. Mombox.com or on social at Mombox,
pretty strong, memorable branding there. Great name. Listeners, let me know what you think. Let me know who you'd like to hear from, from our archives of thousands of stories. Now, at this point, this was 3,309 episode 3,309. You can stream or download every single one of these episodes for
free at sidehustleschool.com. You can also subscribe or follow wherever you get your shows for the new daily episodes that come out, well, every day because they are daily. All right. That's it for now, but I'll be back tomorrow. My name is Chris Guillebeau. You're listening to Side Hustle School.
From the Onward Project.
