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Building a Business Inspired by Child’s Play
What happens when a seasoned chemical engineer becomes a mom? She decides to create designs with kids at play in mind. You get toys that don’t just look fun, they become the stuff that hours of creative playtime are made of.
Marie Field Faith considers herself a mom by profession and an engineer by passion. Marie is a firm believer that you don’t need much to enjoy play. When she was growing up, she had a few toys and lots of trees. “That’s what I want them to enjoy. Get away from the TV and really just play,” she says. Marie found a way to achieve this with her own three kids, Pottly, Tubby and Bayla, who also happen to be her greatest product critics for Pottly N Tubby, an imaginative play décor shop for kids.
It all started when, during a short career break, Marie had a choice of going back to work as a chemical engineer or testing out the waters of the Philippines’ booming entrepreneurial community. She shares, “At that time, I was looking for things that my kids could do aside from going into malls or buying plastic toys. And we thought, why not give them something they could use for creative play? We got a small booth in BGC and that’s where we had our first teepee in the booth.” Needless to say, the teepee was a hit, and the rest is history!
“Seeing how people enjoy using our teepee gives us, makers, a lot of joy. Our teepees are handcrafted. We source the fabric, we cut it, we put it into poles, and sometimes we do the set up at home as well,” she shares.
It’s the sparkle in a child’s eye that keeps her going; that moment when she sees children playing make believe with her products; that for her is the most amazing part of her passion project.
“I think it’s important in this modern world for my kids to know that you don’t really need a lot of stuff to enjoy play. You know when they approach us and say, ‘I really love it but I don’t have any space,’ we explain that you can take the teepee anywhere. You can take it to the beach, the park, and just let the imagination of the kids take it where they want to go.”
With three kids and a thriving business, how does Marie do it all? There were days, especially during the start-up period, when she had to get her hands deep in work and get help from her support system. Now that business is booming, she can let the entrepreneurial side rest to focus on being a mom. For Marie, work-life balance is a day by day affair. “I think that’s something all of us moms have to accept. We shouldn’t feel guilty working. There are periods where you really need to spend a lot of time with the business. But the good thing is that it passes. I have found a really good manager that takes on a lot of my responsibilities so it gives me back more time,” she ends.
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