Leaning Into Expertise a Retailer Success Story with Daniella Raffa of Mamma Shack

Catherine Erdly: I’m curious to know what percentage of people listening today started their business because they wanted to create or curate the products that they themselves wanted in their lives but weren’t able to find.

And it’s a story that many of you may be listening to this and thinking yes that sounds familiar. And its certianly how Daniella Raffa who’s joining me on the podcast today got started with her business Mama Shack.

But since that time, she has grown the business significantly, and she is one of my longest term clients as well as a participant in my mastermind, which is currently open for enrollment for the sixth cohort, which kicks off shortly. And if you want to know more about that, then head over to the show notes or head to resilientretailclub.com to find out more.

My name is Catherine Erdly. I am the founder of the resilient retail club, which is my membership group and mastermind for product businesses. And you are listening to the resilient retail game plan podcast episode number 216 with Daniella Rafa from Mama shack.

Welcome to the Resilient Retail Game Plan, a podcast for anyone wanting to start, grow or scale a profitable creative product business with me, Catherine Erdly. The Resilient Retail Game Plan is a podcast dedicated to one thing, breaking down the concepts and tools that I’ve gathered from 20 years in the retail industry and showing you how you can use them in your business.

This is the real nuts and bolts of running a successful product business, broken down in an easy, accessible way. This is not a podcast about learning how to make your business look good. It’s the tools and techniques that will make you and your business feel good. Confidently plan, launch, and manage your products, and feel in control of your sales numbers and cash flow to help you build a resilient retail business.

Meet Daniella Raffa of Mama Shack

Catherine Erdly: Daniella, thank you so much for joining me on the podcast today. Do you want to start off by introducing yourself and your business?

Daniella Raffa: I do. So my name is Daniella and I run a business called Mama Shack. We sell modern baby essentials to parents looking for practical baby products that don’t compromise on their style.

Catherine Erdly: Fantastic. And you and I have worked together for a long time. I was thinking about this. I think it’s probably maybe the first time we worked together was pre pandemic. So it’s got to be like five or six years.

Daniella Raffa: I think it was, , you’re the first person that saw me cry on zoom. So there you go.

Catherine Erdly: But you’re not the only person I’ve seen cry on team. That’s for sure.

Daniella Raffa: You’re not the only person that’s seen me cry on zoom either.

The Origin Story of Mama Shack

Catherine Erdly: So can you tell me a little bit about what made you start Mama Shack in the beginning?

Daniella Raffa: So my friend was having a baby shower in 2016 and she was desperate to find baby products that she’s got quite quirky taste. She’s really, she loves interiors and she’s really inspired by print. And she’s I really just can’t find anything that suits my aesthetic. And so I’ve got a background in product development and design.

So I can definitely find this for you. I couldn’t find anything. So I had a go at using someone based in England to see if they could make one for me. I did. She absolutely loved it. While I was researching different manufacturers and trying to find a decent changing mat for her.

I couldn’t find anything which led me to believe that, Oh, maybe there’s a gap in the market here.

So I started selling them to friends. I started the website in 2016 and we just sold changing mats. We used to personalize them at the time.

Catherine Erdly: I remember that. You did that for a while, right? The personalization.

Daniella Raffa: Yeah, I think we did that for, I think we only stopped a couple of years ago. That was quite a long time. And then whilst all of this was going on, I had a full time job in product design and the business kind of ran alongside that. I made a decision at one point to go freelance in my career because I wasn’t happy at the company that I worked for.

And I was still running Mama Shack alongside this. Then I realized I was actually making more money from the website than I was my freelance jobs.

Catherine Erdly: Right.

Daniella Raffa: So I decided to go full time. Unfortunately, as when I made this decision, I kissed my maternity pay. Goodbye. As I hadn’t realized I was pregnant before I made this decision.

So I went all in on the business. It worked out. I started off drop shipping it directly from the factory. And then eventually I started bringing in stock into a unit and then I’ve got a bigger unit, a big unit. And then I had my own unit where I think at one point we had about four people working there.

So the business kind of built up from there.

Expanding the Product Line

Daniella Raffa: So our first changing mat was just the flat standard traditional style changing mat. And then we worked on building the wedge shape, which is also known as anti roll different versions of travel mats.

And then we went into bedding textiles. We’ve dipped our toe into clothing and nappy caddies. The best thing, I think my proudest product that we’ve created was reinventing the car window shade. They were always really boring. They had really cartoony characters on them and we started putting modern prints on those and they did really well.

So that’s probably the best, one of my favorite reinventions of baby products that we’ve done.

Catherine Erdly: Wow. So you basically saw that there was a gap in the market, you jumped in, but then you were really. Leaning on your background. So do you want to tell us a bit more about your background? So product development design. So you’ve always worked in this particular area.

Daniella Raffa: Yeah. So I was a product developer and fashion designer for 13 years. My background is in branded products. So I worked for a company called new era for quite a few years. I got to work in their us office for three years, which was It’s one of the highlights of my career. I think I’ve worked at sweaty Betty.

I worked with Ivy park. I worked on juicy couture made a bit of a comeback about two or three years ago. And I worked on the technical side of the product. When they did their launch. Yeah, it’s always been product focus, which is. My favorite area. I’m absolutely obsessed with products. I love buying them.

I love designing them. I love buying them on Tik Tok.

Catherine Erdly: Yeah, we’ve talked about banning you from TikTok Shop.

Daniella Raffa: Yeah, refer back to the sushi train that I purchased last year.

Catherine Erdly: So that was, you were leaning into your natural skillset, which was to go out find manufacturers, work with the manufacturers, create technical specs for the products, get them developed and get them made, which I’m guessing is something that for most people, when they first start out, it’s a huge learning curve, but for you, I’m sure it was still a learning curve, right?

Cause you were switching product areas, but not nearly as steep as it might otherwise have been.

Daniella Raffa: Yeah, when I first started when I first started freelancing, I worked with corporate clients. And I also worked with people who just wanted to start a business in clothing, had no idea how to get the products made, had no idea how to get it into the country. So I helped them through that. And I think In realizing that I was like, Oh, okay.

I do. I do know what I’m talking about. I always had that doubt in my mind, but I thought, okay, this is my thing. I find this part really easy. Cause I enjoy it and I’ve been trained in it. And mainly because I enjoy doing it. I love, as I said, I love everything about the design and development process.

Catherine Erdly: Yeah.

Challenges and Fulfillment Solutions

Catherine Erdly: You touched on a little bit about how the business changed since you started it, but you started off very much focused on, on changing mats and then expanded your range, but in what other ways has it evolved over time?

Daniella Raffa: So probably the biggest milestone in the business has been moving to a fulfillment center. We self fulfilled for about six or seven years. And I moved into fulfillment last year. The first fulfillment center that I went into, it didn’t really work out. However, once I got a taste for not having the responsibility and running the day to day of shipping product, I got a taste for it that I couldn’t get rid of.

So I was determined to find another fulfillment center. They’re based up North. They’re absolutely amazing. They make my life so much easier in ways that I could never have dreamt of. So that was the biggest, that was the biggest shift for me. I think for me, the most important part of a product business is delivering the product to the customer and the customer service. I think I started to realize, and it took me a long time that I, absolutely hated running a warehouse. It wasn’t what my where my passion lay. It wasn’t where my expertise was. I wasn’t very good at it. And I just needed that part of it taken away from me to someone who could run it properly, who did know what they were doing.

And I could focus my time elsewhere on things that I am good at. I ended up not doing half of those things. I’d end up doing a full day in the office sorting out loads of different problems to do with shipping. I know the printer broke. I remember I was sat for three hours trying to fix the printer once and I thought, what the hell am I doing here?

And then I’d get home, I’d go and pick my son up from nursery. And then I’d start trying to do the things that I was good at. And I just didn’t have any energy for it. And it just wasn’t a sustainable way to work. I really did feel, I felt burnt out a lot of the time and I didn’t actually realize how miserable I was until I got to the point where I just didn’t want to be there anymore.

And I was like, someone just take it all away from me. Just shove it in a fulfillment center. I’ve had enough.

Catherine Erdly: Yeah, it’s such an interesting one because this is a conversation. I have lots of people about the choices between self fulfillment and outsource fulfillment and it’s Something that you have to consider what works for you as a business owner But I often do say to people if you want to do your own fulfillment, which has its own advantages in terms of Personal service or if your products maybe aren’t suitable for a fulfillment center because they’re much lower value or something like that, then I always say you have to remember that a warehouse manager is a job, right? It’s a full time job. So yeah, and a difficult one and customer services can become a full time job. So when you outsource it not only. means that the kind of day to day packing is being taken off you. But the, like you say, like the management if somebody doesn’t turn up to pack on the day, that’s not a problem you have to solve anymore, right?

It’s just no longer something that you do.

Daniella Raffa: It’s taken off my plate.

I think I also as well, I don’t know if you’d believe it or not. The logistics of changing mats are so complicated. They’re, it’s a really lightweight product. But it holds a lot of volume and it’s not very high value either. Some carriers just won’t even bother with you cause they can’t get it through their conveyor belt system.

I remember one day DPD, who we used to ship with, had just decided that we used to ship everything in recyclable bags. They just decided we’re not going to, collect from you today because it’s too complicated for us to pick up 50 changing mats from you. It’s difficult for us to take in the van.

It, they fly off the conveyor belt, et cetera, et cetera. So I couldn’t get anyone to collect for me for about four days. And then I had to go and get bespoke boxes made and I had to order them in minimums of two thousands. It was just it was just a nightmare. And I just thought, I just don’t want to do this.

This isn’t where it. This isn’t where my knowledge base lays, and there’s definitely someone that can do this better for me and figure out these problems on my behalf so I can work. on the other areas of the business that I’m good at and are also a profitable area as well.

Catherine Erdly: Yeah, for sure. It’s knowing your strengths. So obviously there are some things in the business where you just got to the point where you just didn’t want to do it. You just almost hit a wall where you just said, I can’t do this anymore. Someone else has got to do it for me.

Outsourcing and Delegation

Catherine Erdly: But are there other ways, other areas that you are able to identify before you get to that crisis point as in this is where I should be focusing my time and energy versus this is where I should outsource.

How do you make those kind of decisions?

Daniella Raffa: So I think you’ve helped me by drumming this into my head that I can do anything, but I can’t do everything. I know we sat down and we made it was like an a chart which had different areas of the business that was like marketing, product development, et cetera, et cetera. And. It was really sitting down and thinking about, do I enjoy this? Is this task profitable? Can this be handed off to someone else?

So I’ve worked with digital marketing agencies off and on throughout the journey of Mama Shack and when I moved into fulfillment, I just recently stopped with a previous one I was using and I was like I like doing Facebook ads and Google ads.

I can just do this myself. And I think it took me about two months to realize that I didn’t really enjoy it, if I’m honest. And I wasn’t very good at it because I had no interest in learning about, if Google changed how it relays information or how it presents its findings to its users.

Like I just didn’t have any interest in that first. So for me, that was the first thing I need to hand these things over to people who do care about Google’s algorthium. I think a lot of people who work for themselves, they are trained to think oh, I can just do everything myself But I think i’ve always tried to think do I enjoy it?

Can someone do this better as well? is the area profitable does it be handled by an expert? Not me in and out of it every three months because just remembered that I have to..

Catherine Erdly: So true. It’s such a good way of putting it because I think that often we think about what do we need to do as the business owners and in reality, the list is probably really short of what it actually has to be us doing. And if we’re really honest with ourselves, there’s going to be things like, for example, it makes no sense for you to outsource product development, right?

Because that’s your area of expertise and it would be probably pretty expensive to outsource and you enjoy doing it. So in your business, that’s an area that 100 percent is not going to, doesn’t make sense to outsource. But for some other people, that’s going to be number one on their list because they know that they’re never going to Be able to wrap their head around what needs to be in a tech pack. It’s all about where’s your zone of genius, as it were what, what are you really

Daniella Raffa: I was going to say I really should only be doing product based tasks. I shouldn’t be unleashed on SEO or marketing. I just shouldn’t be doing those things. I like, the mastermind I know you have Annabelle who helped. She’s almost like a mental health advisor of business.

Catherine Erdly: Yes.

Daniella Raffa: We did a test when I first started the session with her, we did a test when she relayed the feedback to me, she said, you’re very good at starting things, but it seems like you’re not so good at the follow through. And I, and then I think that was the first time I thought, yes, I need to accept this is me in an absolute nutshell.

But I, one of the things that I would really like to hand off in the future is More of a marketing role. I love coming up with the creative ideas and the concept for content, but I am not good at the follow through. I’ve done, I’ve also done a lot of work around setting up affiliate marketing and we’ve got quite a good group of people on our own website doing affiliates.

And then we also do affiliate marketing through a win and I’ve done all the setup but I’m not doing the nurturing and it’s identifying that where I’m like, okay, I’ve done the setup. I pointed in the direction that this is where I need to go, but now someone needs to support me in making sure they’re nurturing both of those communities and doing the follow through as well.

Catherine Erdly: Yeah. Yeah. But I think that’s a useful thing to know about yourself, to be honest, because there are some people that are great at the follow through, but they’re never going to be the ideas people. And so they’re great at being super organized and to process. But if you said to them, I need you to be come up with a vision for where this is going to be in five years, it wouldn’t be their natural skillset.

So I do think that there’s an element to which a small business owners, we can beat ourselves up for being a certain way, but actually sometimes she’s just about recognizing that this is who I am. This is how I work. So let’s try and do, let’s try and lean into that and work with it.

Daniella Raffa: She’s definitely helped in clarifying that in my mind. Cause so I’m going to be turning 40 next year. So I think. All of these things will finally slot into place and I’ll just know everything by then because I’ll be a proper adult. So

Catherine Erdly: That’d be great, wouldn’t it?

Daniella Raffa: yeah, I’m sure that’s how it happens. But

Catherine Erdly: Sadly I’m 46 and I can tell you it doesn’t work like that, but

Daniella Raffa: why crush my dreams?

Catherine Erdly: So what do you think then, going back to, I know that for fulfillment outsourcing, it was not a smooth ride, but what would you say has been your biggest challenge in the business, and how do you think you’ve overcome it?

Daniella Raffa: Probably it was definitely the fulfillment. That was always my biggest challenge. And I didn’t realize how much of a challenge it was and how it was really making me feel until I had a. a good word with myself and made the switch. But also sometimes me, I can be my own challenge.

It’s just overthinking trying to change my mindset on things.. I feel like I don’t often enjoy the journey because I don’t allow myself to, whereas now I do. So I think just sometimes. I can get in the way of my own success by overthinking.

But also one of the other challenges is finding people along your journey.

I’ve had a couple of mishaps along the way, but I think it’s, that itself hiring the right people is another skill. So when I was working for other companies, I did do the hiring process for my team. However, I always had the support of hr. They’d always vetted people first.

They’d ask the right questions. And I’d go in and be like, so which designers do you love? And, . And then follow it through from there. And I think, finding the right people to hire and the right people to outsource to.

my prime example would be digital marketing.

We’ve been through quite a few agencies, and it’s mainly because I can sometimes be a bit shotgun in my approach as well. If I just get a feeling about someone, I might just think, okay, they’ll do or may, or I want to quickly get something off my plate and I think, oh, okay. They’ll do. But I didn’t pay enough attention at points throughout my journey of sitting down and thinking, okay, is this the right person for the business?

Do they understand what our business does? Do they understand our customer? And that’s tripped me over a few times. I think the first digital marketing company that we used I didn’t really understand how they worked to start with. The guy that I originally spoke to, he was an amazing storyteller.

He really pulled me in. He had the girl that was working with me packing in the background Oh my God, I don’t know what he’s selling, but I really want to buy it. He was amazing. And then I quickly realized that their area of expertise, it wasn’t baby products. It was local SEO. So it would be for people who were tradesmen local businesses.

And then we didn’t ever get the right kind of content, but we should never have worked together. So…

Catherine Erdly: yeah.

Daniella Raffa: that’s

Catherine Erdly: great. It just wasn’t the right fit.

Daniella Raffa: wasn’t the, yeah, it wasn’t the right fit.

The

Catherine Erdly: So do you feel like you’ve developed a process then over the years or do you just get yourself to slow down the decision making? Is that the kind of key to it? Mm

Daniella Raffa: I think I’ve slowed myself down. I try and sit and think about things. I try not to think just with my gut. I try and make more practical decisions rather than just thinking out and also taking my time to think over it properly, talking about it with other people, not just thinking I need to get this off my plate.

This person will do, I can’t be bothered to. go anywhere else. So it’s tripped me up quite a lot in the past, and I’m sure I’ll do it again, but I’ve really tried to, I really I think for me, it helps if I talk it through with other people. My, my mum unfortunately is the person who suffers most of this talking through, and you unfortunately as well.

Catherine Erdly: Not unfortunately at all.

Daniella Raffa: just having that sound in board with someone else. It’s again, if I think about when I worked in a corporate environment, I’d never be responsible for making those kind of, decision solely by myself.

I’d have to talk about with 500 other people and then it would have to get approval. Then someone else would look at it and then you could still not make the right decision. But there was more of a process in place. Whereas, working by yourself, you often do fly by the seat of your pants.

Catherine Erdly: yeah, that’s so true. Yeah, and also because it can be hard to find people who actually get what you’re trying to do as well, it’s not everyone, you

Daniella Raffa: as well, you don’t actually know how to articulate what you do, which sounds ridiculous in a way. I’ll use an example of the digital marketing agencies. They’ll say, what do you need from us? Or what would you like us to do in this area? And I think, I don’t know.

I don’t work in digital marketing. I’m not sure. And then you might not be able to get the best from them because maybe, you’ve not got the experience of asking that department of people, what you need from them.

Catherine Erdly: Yes, yeah, so you’re relying on them to tell you what you need.

Daniella Raffa: Yeah, and sometimes I want them to do that as well.

Advice for New Entrepreneurs

Catherine Erdly: apart from not always going with your gut immediately without thinking it through or talking it through, what advice would you, what advice would you give to someone first starting out or what advice would you wish that you’d had when you first started out?

Daniella Raffa: Don’t get caught up in the noise of other people’s success I think I spent a lot of time growing the business to what I thought success looked like and how I thought that I should run it. So I thought that for me to be successful, I had to have a unit that I fulfilled from. I had to have a big team of people.

And as I’ve gone through the journey, I’ve realized that a lot of those things don’t make me happy and really I’m working for myself with all the risk, so it should make me happy. And I think we’ve all done it where we’ve gone down rabbit holes and compared ourselves to other businesses and thought this person’s done this, so this is what I have to do.

And you never know really how successful a business is doing. You don’t know how much help they have, you don’t know what their journey looks like. So really focusing on your own journey and working out what your idea of success looks like is really important. And I still tell myself that now because I still go down rabbit holes from time to time.

But

Catherine Erdly: I love that. It’s so true. It’s and I say this all the time, it’s You’re allowed to have, in fact, you should have your own vision of success and it can look very different to somebody else’s, but that’s okay. Because, it’s all about what you want, how you want to live your life.

It’s quite profound and very individual. And also, I certainly see. A huge number of businesses that look like all kinds of things from the outside. I think I’ve just really learned that external appearances are not necessarily reflective of what’s going on truly behind the scenes in a business, which I’m sure we all know. I think we all know subconsciously, but it’s definitely, people who may have huge units or whatever, but they’re under enormous stress and people that maybe have fairly unassuming presences, but actually everything’s ticking along nicely and they’re really happy and fulfilled.

And it’s just, it’s interesting. It’s just like no correlation, almost no correlation between how a business looks and how the founder feels for sure.

Daniella Raffa: yeah, it’s like you can’t chase, what you end up doing is trying, you’re chasing someone else’s dream and it’s, and I think. Your business does evolve as you go along as well, and it evolves, how we started off and what I wanted to do is completely different to what we do now and what I see it doing in the future.

And there’s a great example of a business that I always think about. So OPI started off as a pharmaceutical company. And they now only sell nail varnish. So I always think about that in the back of my head. I’m like, you could be changing mats now, but it could be vacuum cleaners in 10 years time.

You just don’t know.

Catherine Erdly: Is that a particular area of interest then, vacuum cleaners?

Daniella Raffa: else I’d like to outsource. Take these lessons in my daily life.

Future Plans for Mama Shack

Catherine Erdly: So apart from pivoting to vacuum cleaners what’s next for Mama shack?

Daniella Raffa: To dip my toe back into clothing. I feel like we’ve got a really good collection of baby essentials now. Some really good silhouettes that we can keep on refabricating, adding our own prints . Clothing is my background. I’ve worked in men’s wear and women’s wear, dabbled in kids wear. We did launch a collection of clothing a couple of years ago. It was probably about four years ago now. That was one of the projects that I went into really quickly without a proper plan and it didn’t work out. But yeah, I’d like to, I’d like to do it properly, launch it properly.

Especially now I’ve got more time. Within the business to really focus on planning for it to go to market, focus on getting all the products the right print. So yeah, give it another go.

Catherine Erdly: Amazing.

Conclusion and Farewell

Catherine Erdly: Thank you so much for joining us today. Do you want to finish off by telling people where they can find out more about Mama shack?

Daniella Raffa: Yes. So you can find me on Instagram, which is mummashackbaby. We’ve also got the same handle mummashackbaby for Tik Tok. You can find us on interest. You can find us on Pinterest if you’re looking for nursery inspiration and mummashack. co. uk if you want to go and browse our products.

Catherine Erdly: Thank you so much for tuning in. Thank you so much again, Daniella, for sharing your story. I’ve really enjoyed hearing how you built on your industry experience and. Built the mighty mumshack to the business it is today. If you enjoyed today’s podcast, then do please rate and review it. You can leave us a review on Apple podcasts.

You can also rate it on Apple podcasts or within the Spotify app. And of course, if you follow subscribe, whatever it’s called on the platform that you use for listening to podcasts, then you’ll be the first to know about every new episode, which comes out weekly on a Thursday morning. See you then.