For Lindsay Applebaum Stuart, everything her startup does has to serve a purpose.
As the 36-year-old founder of Mamalux, a Pittsburgh-based company that makes comfortable and leakproof loungewear for new mothers who are breastfeeding, Stuart said her hope is to provide women with a product capable of addressing a problem that she said the market currently lacks a solution for — allowing new mothers to get a comfortable night's sleep without worrying about breastmilk leakage overnight.
"It's such a unique time in a woman's life after you have a baby, and it felt to me, and I think to a lot of other women, that there's nothing specifically out there for you," Stuart said. "It's all kind of like you have to wear something a little bit bigger and it doesn't quite fit your body or you have to wear these uncomfortable nursing pads just until you get through that postpartum phase where you're not leaking. I wanted to create something that's specifically for this phase in a mother's life and most of all the (products) that are out there, even if they're labeled postpartum, they don't actually offer anything unique, they're just bigger."
That work first started with the company's leakproof lounge dress which is made from soft, antimicrobial bamboo fabric. It features patent-pending washable and removable nursing pads that remain fixed in place throughout the night, preventing the need to sleep with an oftentimes uncomfortable bra to accomplish the same effect. The dress also comes with pockets for pacifiers, a phone or other needed items and is available for preorder in two different colors for $98, with the first shipments set to go out in January.
"The technology is really the pads, which we developed ourselves, and we tested a ton of different materials with real breast milk and spent a lot of time making sure that those materials will work really well together," Stuart said. "The materials and the combination of them in the way that they attached to the dress, which is like a sort of velcro-like technology, that's what we're patenting because it just doesn't exist anywhere."
But Stuart isn't looking to stop with the creation of just one product. In October, she launched and successfully completed a $25,000 Kickstarter campaign. She's hoping to use the proceeds to develop a complimentary product to the dress that's similar to a robe and also find other clothing variations for the removable nursing pads to be housed in, like tank tops. Stuart said the antimicrobial robe will be made of the same fabrics as the dress and comes with a built-in nursing cover that can be removed once the breastfeeding phase for a child ends, an ability Stuart said allows for the product to "grow" with the mother as she adjusts to provide for her child after it has moved on from breastfeeding.
The idea for the robe, Stuart said, also comes after a countless number of conversations with other mothers about the unique needs they have when it comes to nursing a child. Stuart, being a mother herself, also used her own judgment to help identify possible needs of mothers like her.
"(It comes) from talking to moms who really felt like there was a gap in the market and that this product was needed," Stuart, who learned halfway through the Kickstarter campaign that she was pregnant with her now-expected third child, said. "I feel like now I am the customer, and it felt like the timing was great aside from being exhausted, and having morning sickness and all that."
In the new year, Stuart said she's looking to expand her search for funding options and is considering raising up to $500,000 either through angel investors or from venture capital. With that amount of funding, she said she'll be able to hire someone to take on the marketing needs for her one-person startup and get ahead of inventory, currently at about 400 units ordered.
"Fundraising is definitely the focus of the first quarter of next year," she said. "Because I have a marketing background, I know how important it is, no matter how great your product is, if you don't have the funds to market it, it doesn't really matter."
