Bright idea for mums on the move becomes a reality

Needing to feed her baby on a long journey gave one Yorkshire woman an idea for an invention. Catherine Scott reports.

A North Yorkshire mum’s experience of travelling with her own young baby inspired her to invent something to make parents’ lives easier which will be unveiled this weekend.

Claire Mitchell, from Ripon, came up with the idea for a gadget that allows mums on the move to feed their babies direct from a formula milk carton, after a stressful car journey with her own hungry newborn.

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Now, three-and-a-half years after that eureka moment, she is getting ready to launch the finished product at the Nursery Show in Harrogate on March 27.

“I can still recall the frustration I felt on that long car journey back in 2007 when I realised I’d forgotten to pack a clean sterilised bottle for my baby,” recalls Claire.

After complaining that someone ought to invent a teat that connected directly to a baby milk carton she decided to design her own and, with help from Ripon design company Pd-m International Ltd, she developed a prototype.

Now, with a string of enterprise awards under her belt, Claire is preparing to launch the Chillipeeps teat at one of the UK’s biggest nursery fairs.

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Claire and her husband Rob had been married for 19 years before the unexpected arrival of their daughter Mimi.

“Having a baby after so many years as a couple changed our lives, so we were more than ready to take on the adventure with Chillipeeps,” she says.

The road to success hasn’t always been easy, but en route she has picked up industry acclaim, not to mention some mentoring from TV “Dragon” James Caan.

“Most products in the nursery industry take six and a half years to progress from concept to market but we’ve done it in almost half that time and we’ve done it on our own,” says Claire, a former care home manager.

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Richard Hall, managing director of design company Pd-m International Ltd, said he saw the potential in the idea from day one.

“As a father-of-three myself I could understand the concept and the marketing potential so my designers started work on a teat that could be directly attached to a ready-made baby formula milk carton,” says Richard.

However, securing funding to start production still proved fraught with problems and Claire eventually decided to do it herself using her own money. “We’ve put everything on credit cards – in fact, we’ve put everything on the line – but we’re aiming high in the first year and if our projections are right we’ll easily repay that investment,” she says.

“There’s lots of interest from some of the biggest baby names on the high street but nobody has seen the final product yet. It’s the culmination of more than three years’ work and I’m buzzing with excitement.”

INVENTION WINS OVER THE EXPERTS

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Claire decided to enter her Chillipeeps invention into an industry-specific concept and innovation competition to see what the industry thought of it. As a finalist, she displayed the prototype at the BPA show at Excel in London and was overwhelmed by the positive feedback from industry experts. It was there in 2009 that she received the ultimate seal of approval from the nursery world when she was named overall winner of the Baby Products Association Concept and Innovation Awards. Not long afterwards she was named a winner in the national Women on their Way Awards for Outstanding New Product.