Media
How do they do it? - Australian Womens Weekly
May 2007
After months of research, meetings and calling in favours from friends and family, Melbourne's Caroline Hume, 37, was ready to sell her swim range in 2003. "I was so nervous," recalls the founder of Cuddle Fish. "I couldn't eat."
However, when she took samples of her buoyancy swimsuits and UV Tee's into her first shop in Brighton, the response was instant. "The store owner just loved it," says Caroline. "I had five appointments that day and had a 100 per cent strike rate."
Three years later, Caroline's range, which includes the best-selling suit with built-in floatation, is now exported to the US, UK, Belgium, New Zealand, Hong Kong and Singapore, and is sold to 70 stockists throughout Australia. Parents can also buy online at cuddlefish.com.au.
It cost Caroline and her husband, Chris, "around $10,000" to set up the business. In the first year, the company broke even, became profitable in the second year and she's already met her target for this financial year.
Caroline has shaped the business to work around her girls - Isabella, seven, and Eva, five. "They've always come first," she says. "I take my cues from them and have structured my day to work for them." She now works four half-days a week from her Elsternwick home in south-east Melbourne and has a warehouse around the corner.
Though Caroline says working from home has many benefits - "I don't have to rush the children out the door and I'm there for every pick-up" - she has rules to make it work. She won't take personal calls during work hours (she has two phone lines), maintains the business every day and turns off her mobile after five.
Caroline never intended to be an entrepreneur. She was a teacher before leaving for Hong Kong with Chris in 1996 and later Switzerland and London, and worked overseas in marketing and event management. It was on a holiday in France in 2001, when Isabella was 18 months old, that the seed for Cuddle Fish was planted. "We brought this fantastic buoyancy suit for Bella there," says Caroline, "Everywhere we went, people asked where it was from. Finally, it degraded and I couldn't find any product like it in Australia for Eva," recalls Caroline. Cuddle Fish was soon born.
Today, Caroline says she's just doing what her mother did when she was growing up. "I've seen a mum who's been a great mother, yet has retained a sense of herself and been able to be stimulated," says Caroline. "My business is just part of my life and I couldn't be happier."
