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Health & Fitness

Success Secrets of Enterprising Women - Interview with Melissa Magee of Lullababes

Weekly radio show by Hera Hub, where San Diego female entrepreneurs share their business journey, advice, and success secrets. This week hear about San Diego-based Lullababe's blankets.

Hera Hub Guest Introduction:
Melissa Magee is such a creative woman. I'm so so excited to have gotten to know her over the last year or so. She is one of those rare San Diego natives. She is a wife and a mother of two. Her business is called the Lullababes, which was started in 2006 after receiving an invitation to a 2 year old birthday party and the invite said "No Gifts," which is kind of an awkward situation. So what do you do? So her thought was, if she actually made something, that she could get around this idea of "No Gifts." So, she made her first Lullababes Blanket. She made one for Ruby, her daughter and her friends and then she started getting demand from other people for gifts. Her best friend wanted one for herself and then that's really how the larger sized blankets, which she calls the Big Babe Blanket was born. Melissa has been growing her company ever since!  

Hera Hub: Tell us more about your background

Melissa: Well, college was not really for me. I was not the best student - I was not really interested in sitting in a classroom all day and then having to do homework at night. With me, it was one or the other. So I left and went to work. And very quickly learned that I would rather get a paycheck than a homework assignment. 

That's just kind of my personality. I like to do things my own way. I don't like to be told what to do. So, I went through a few different career options. And, found that you need to find out what you don't want to do. I worked in several different industries – a bank, a restaurant, the mortgage industry... my favorite being the restaurant industry, because everybody there is happy and ready to have fun. And in the mortgage industry and banking, nobody is happy at those places.

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He had a real obsession with fleece fabric and I had a sewing machine that I had bought about five years before for our previous business. My husband and I had started, but it didn't work. Um, so I said, "I can just sew and square it up, that's not too difficult." So, I bought the fabric and I sewed it and I put a satin binding on it because that's what my baby blanket had when I was little and of course I still have my satin bindings to this day which is the only thing that is left of my blanket.

So, I knew that this would be a well accepted gift for him, and then of course I looked at my daughter and went, "well..."

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Well, I actually was pregnant at the time of that party. So after she was born, of course I made her a blanket. And then she had a best friend who was born a week before her and she needed a blanket. And then people started to see them and then they would request them from me and so I started to get more serious about it and started experimenting with different fabrics. And I did flannel and I did satin. And I found that the fleece, over the years of washing and loving, that the fleece is a very hardy, sturdy fabric that's easy to wash and easy to take care of when you have a two year old. Meaning that they're running around driving their blanket down the street, you need something that's going to hold out. And so I tried a lot of different backings as well and I, I finally settled on what I like to call Shag. It's technically called a silky, furry fleece. But it kinda looks like animal fur. It's really soft, it washes up amazing. You throw it in the washer and dryer; I pre-wash everything so if it's going to shrink, it's already done that. I wash it all in baby-safe detergent so they're practically ready to give to a baby. Although, I would always wash them before I would give them to a newborn. 

All the baby blankets come in cake boxes, I'm very into presentation. I think that if you buy something, it should be ready to be presented to whoever you are giving it to. And the cake boxes have a see-through lid on the top, that. It makes a nice presentation.

Hera Hub: You say it's easy but you have to understand that not everyone is that creative.

Melissa: Yes, I came from a creative family. My mom is a ballet dancer, my dad was a drummer for a long time. I needle-pointed a stocking in high school. I knit a sweater in high school. We always were hand painting Christmas ornaments. There was always kind of a craft project going on.

Hera Hub: Talk to us a little bit about the ups and the downs, maybe share one piece of advice that you might have for entrepreneurs.

Melissa: I started this business in 2006, when my daughter was less than one. And then two years later I had my son. So, it was more of a hobby I would say for the first four years. I did get some orders, but I wasn't working on the business. But now that they're older, I have more time to dedicate and I'm working very hard on the business. 

Some obstacles that I've run into... the biggest one would be – myself. And self-doubt, and lack of knowledge and wanting to give up because you don't  know all the answers off the top of your head. But I found that there are plenty of people in my life –  and if they are not in your life they can be connected to the people in your life – that are willing to help you and give you advice and introduce you to contacts that you would never have made on your own.  I hired a business coach because I don't know anything about the business world.

Probably, one of the biggest things I did wrong is, I spent a lot of money making everything very very pretty – like my website. And I didn't take the time to do the behind the scenes things that give you your Search Engine Optimization. So now I'm working on implementing all those things into my website, which is actually much more functional for me. 

Hera Hub: What would you say you love most about your business?

Melissa: I love that it's mine. I love that I can, hopefully hand it down to my children one day and this is the beginning of a legacy for them. Uh, I love that it's creative and I love to help anybody I can. I just made a blanket this week for a three-year-old going through chemotherapy. That's just a donation from me, It's, that, that pulled at my heart strings.

I made another blanket for a wounded warrior who, right after he woke up from surgery, he said, “Go get my blanket, I'm freezing.” He's now back in Afghanistan. And he took his blanket with him and they lost it and it was the only thing that he was upset about that was missing. They finally found it. Because it gets to around 20 degrees at night, in the desert, it's very cold. And my blanket was very very warm. The 'Big Babe' which is 9 feet by 5 feet weighs 6 pounds. So, it's, it's a substantial blanket. So, he's back in Afghanistan very happy with the blanket.

Also, I try not to throw anything away. I try to be very respectful of the environment. All my blankets are sewn in my home, which has solar panels. So everything is sewn on solar energy, which is really important to me as well. And all my remnant fabric, that I don't use, I donate to a non-profit called 'Project Linus' who make blankets for underprivileged children. 

Hera Hub: What are your secrets to your success in this business?

Melissa: Pure determination. I could have given up a long time ago. But I am a very diligent. I'm a big dream kind of person; I've been told by several people, “You can't dream that big!” and I'm like, “Don't you dare tell me. I can dream that I own the moon. I can dream whatever I want,” and I do. I do it all day long.

I wanna go to England in a private plane – so I just now have to figure out how to make that happen. So it's pure determination to be successful regardless of having a college degree or not. Being a woman, doing it while I'm a mom, which is always difficult. And being able to pass it along to my children so that if they want it, it's there for them. Or they, they're welcome to do whatever their passion is. But I would like to give them the opportunity of belonging to a family business.

Hera Hub: Tell us what's on the horizon for your business. Where are you going with 'Lullababes'?

Melissa: My sights are set on Hollywood. This week Beyoncé got a blanket. So that was a very exciting deal. Fingers crossed. My vision is - I'm in the grocery store and she's on the cover of People Magazine holding her baby and the blanket. That's my vision. I'm trying to get them out in Hollywood because, you know, as sad as it is to give a celebrities, who make a ton of money, but one celebrity walking down the sidewalk with my blanket can do huge things for my company. Which in turn, I can do more for the world. I can donate more blankets to wounded warriors. I can give them to Breast Cancer Survivors and people going through chemo, which is always my goal – it is to give. 

Find Lullababe online and on Twitter.

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