Web-savvy entrepreneurs hit the motherlode
After nearly two years in gestation, Urbanmommies.com launched in June, combining commercial content with expert advice, information and resources for new and expecting moms.
When Arndrea Scott couldn't find a cool diaper bag for a shower gift, she turned to her friend Sydney Irvine in frustration.
"She's like, 'Where? Where can I find a diaper bag?'" Irvine said, mimicking her almost hysterical friend. "I'm like, 'No, no, buddy, there's so much. We have amazing homegrown products…You can get everything here, for goodness sakes."
But even the Web-savvy mother of two couldn't find a comprehensive and engaging local website to look for products and services for mothers.
So she and Scott, a Vancouver marketer, sat down with a glass of wine and hatched the kind of resource they wanted. A mere online shopping directory seemed too dull and Irvine, who had experienced her own difficulties moving from career woman to stay-at-home mom, wanted to give meaningful help to women regarding motherhood.
They decided to become a nucleus for hip Lower Mainland mothers, balancing commercial content with expert advice and information about community resources and events.
Urbanmommies.com kicked off in June after nearly two years in gestation. It garnered more than 1,000 return visitors in the first month and 1,000 subscribers to its quarterly online newsletter.
Irvine, who lives in Port Coquitlam, enlisted her family doctor who delivered both of her children to answer readers' questions. She's negotiating with a life coach to potentially offer further advice online.
"When you have kids, the first one especially, there's a million changes that go on and especially for a woman that has worked up until her pregnancy or up until her baby is born," Irvine said. "There's a lot of times that women feel alone in their feelings, whether they're good or bad, or they think they're crazy or whatever, so it's kind of nice to address some of those things and keep people connected, so you're not the lone crazy mom."
Irvine credits celebrities with making pregnancy hip and sexy. When she was eight months pregnant with her first child six years ago, Irvine caught dirty looks from older women when she wore a bikini to an Okanagan beach in 40-degree weather.
"That's changed," Irvine said. "We are embracing that belly and we love it. You put on a tight, layered T-shirt and little shirt and you feel sexy, if you can feel sexy with a giant bulge. Definitely the mentality has changed."
She wouldn't get pregnant merely because Hollywood starlets are doing it. "But I'm going to make a choice to wear the clothes that they're wearing when they're pregnant."
Irvine believes the shift goes deeper than fashion.
Her 78-year-old grandmother told Irvine in her day women tried not to gain weight and wore bulky clothes to mask their pregnancies.
"My grandmother once said, 'It was almost that we were ashamed, that people had known what we had done to get pregnant.'"
