Our family of brands for families

Did you know that Babiators in Australia is part of a family of brands that our family brings to the families of Australia and New Zealand.

We are the Rigbys and Boutique Brands is our family business. For many years we have run Boutique Brands out of our family home. And when we’ve needed help we have called on local family and friends to help come pack orders, write blog posts, answer customer enquiries, call our family of stockists, post on social media and generally make things happen!

Babiators was developed by 2 amazing families in the US, 2 families that wanted to make it easy for families to keep sunglasses on their kids’ eyes to protect them from sun damage. We have been proud and excited to see the growth of Babiators in Australia and New Zealand over the last few years as more families fall in love with these cool, fun, functional sunnies!

But Babiators isn’t the only brand that we bring to Australia and New Zealand. In the last year we have added The Brushies, and Burrow and Be to our family of brands.

The Brushies

The Brushies is a baby and kids’ toothbrush with a difference. The silicone finger puppet toothbrushes were designed to help make teeth brushing fun, and to take the battle out of brushing. Family dentist Dr Hillary was seeing little patient after little patient whose mum and dad were having trouble get little teeth brushed without World War 3, not the mention the fact that she was struggling with her kids too! So she teamed up with her friend, child psychologist Dr Colleen to develop some tools that would help parents make teeth brushing a fun and engaging time.

Burrow and Be

This year we fell in love with the Burrow and Be clothing and nursery range. Catherine Melo, the Burrow and Be creator and designer, and I chanced upon each other in an online business group and started chatting about how our family businesses could support each other.

Catherine has developed a gorgeous range of baby and children’s clothing, beautiful baby sleepwear and bed linen. Not only is her range divinely designed, with beautiful, age-appropriate, but incredibly styling prints. Not only is it made from soft, quality organic cotton, with a touch of stretchy stuff to make it incredibly comfortable for little ones to move, run, crawl and sleep in. Not only these things, but her range is ethically and sustainably produced with care. It is mindful of supporting families in the countries it is produced in, and sustainable for the environment. And the quality is incredible and able to be passed down from child to child, never be off-trend, and easy to wash and wear and keep its shape beautifully.

Oh my, I feel like I am gushing. I really do love our brands! And that is why we LOVE sharing them with your family and the families of Australia.

There are a couple of other things Boutique Brands do.

We support small family-based Australian brands and business with our fulfilment services.

What that means is we store the stock for these businesses and when they get orders, website orders or wholesale orders for their stockists, we send the orders out for them.

As Babiators grew, John was able to leave his fulltime job and come work alongside me in the business. In the winter months that year, when things aren’t quite as crazy with managing Babiators orders, we offered to help some mum-run businesses we knew with packing their orders. Because what we knew as a family-run business, is that there are only so many days in the week that a mumma has to work on her business, in between naps and playdates and support and nurturing their little ones. As their businesses grew they started running out of time in the day to keep growing. And these were businesses and products that were bringing something to the market that Australian families were really benefiting from.

So we put up our hands to help. While we pack their orders, those amazing business owners were able to focus on growing their businesses, developing their products, and they were able to win back precious family time.

Many of these brands are baby and kid brands. So the idea was born to put our Babiators, Brushies and Burrow and Be products on one website, alongside the products of the brands we are fulfilling. We had all the products here in one place, why not give families a one-stop-shop to buy them from?

So Mums’ Toolbox was born!!

We wanted an online space for mums (and dads and nanas and papas and carers) to go where they could find practical products, aka tools, that would help solve some of the big and the small challenges of parenting.

We have:

• bobo and boo – eco-friendly bamboo and plant-based dinnerware for kids
• Burrow and Be – 100% Organic Cotton clothing for babies, toddlers and kids.
• Little Woods – indestructible and fun silicone plates, bowls, cups, first cutlery and bibs
• The Brushies – Finger Puppet toothbrushes to make teeth brushing fun!

And more to come.

The other brands we pack for:

• The Terry Australia – the world’s coolest terry-toweling hat
• Productpreneur Marketing – amazing marketing planners that help businesses plan and monitor their marketing
• Mashblox – baby eating cube

With more arriving soon!

So that is our FULL family of brands!!

Someone asked me recently to describe why we do what we do in only a few words, and my heart spoke clearly:

To help families thrive

My family
Your family
The families of the brands we work with
Our staff and their families
The families that buy our products
The families that engage with us on social media, our emails and our blogs

We just want to be a blessing to families.

Recently, as we have served more and more brands, and more and more families and stores around Australia and New Zealand with our products, we outgrew our family home. We have moved into a warehouse and continued being able to employ more people (yay!). But even as we grow our commitment is to stay “small” in the way we serve our customers with friendly personalized service and how we love and empower our staff.

So anyway, that is us in a not-so-small nutshell.

Check out all our brands, and don’t forget to support small businesses (ours and others) and the families behind them in this unprecedented, unpredictable economic climate. How you purchase can make a big difference!

Xoxo Kristy, John, Ella and Maxie Rigby

P.S. Keep your eyes peeled in coming days for Ella’s new website that she is launching soon – Ella’s Crazy Crazes!! And Maxie won’t be too far behind with a website of her own too I’m sure LOL #siblingrivalry #itrunsinthefamily #minientreprenuers.