"As a mother, this in itself is enough to give you extraordinary power to do things that you always deemed difficult to do!"

- (Solly Babi, American mom and entrepreneur) (1)

In recent decades the phenomenon of "entrepreneurial mother" has become one of the most widespread phenomena around the world, to the point where the term "Mompreneur" - which combines motherhood and Entrepreneur together - has been coined for mothers who launch startups and entrepreneurial projects despite their responsibilities The heavy burden towards their children and their families.

The term specifically describes the entrepreneurial mother who pursues her projects in parallel with her social and family responsibilities, which may have been the main motivation that made the mother set out to the world of entrepreneurship with the aim of securing the future of her family and children and improving their social level.

Reality and history are full of amazing real examples of pioneering mothers who started their own projects with the aim of protecting their families or in love to share their ideas with the world, and the result was great fortunes for them and their families and the perpetuation of their names.

When the name "Marion Donovan" is mentioned, we are here of a mother and housewife who has transformed all her "home" aspirations into entrepreneurial innovations.

Her name may be unknown to many, but what her hands made inevitably every mother in the world knows.

It suffices to know that Donovan is the inventor of the currently well-known baby diapers, which all sanitary ware companies manufacture improved diapers from the first diapers that they invented nearly seventy years ago.

Returning to her childhood, when Marion came to the world in 1917, she found herself an orphan of a mother, which may have caused her to miss all that a little girl aspires to, including the care and special affection of her mother.

However, this tragedy caused her childhood to pass almost completely back and forth to her father's factory who was obsessed with invention.

Donovan inherited two things of great importance from her father: a love of invention, and the ability to socialize and monitor workers closely.

Nevertheless, Donovan did not seem to have a professional interest in invention and innovation more than her interest in following her father in his factory. She even chose to study English literature and graduated from the Faculty of Arts and then worked as an editor for some different magazines, including "Vogue" magazine specialized in fashion news.

Later, she married, gave birth, and became the head of a household like millions of her peers around the world.

Perhaps at exactly this time - in the 1940s after the end of World War II - with Marion Donovan feeling the responsibility imposed by motherhood in all the details of the suffering in caring for children, the "inventor" in her personality began to emerge.

Donovan was overly upset about her role in changing her diapers, and she realized that something was wrong with the way the diaper was made.

Then her suffering increased further with the arrival of her second child, which made her - automatically - regain the memory of the girl who loved inventions and innovations.

Donovan began to rely on herself in making diapers with a different design and style, which led her to create diapers that are completely different from those in the market, as they absorb wetness better and do not disturb the child, and at the same time they are easier to change and replace, and do not lead to chaos during this the operation.

These diapers earned Donovan four patents registered to her name.

In 1949, driven by her enthusiasm for the quality of the diapers that she developed, Donovan showed her new product in a New York store and it was very popular, which led her to take another step and work to market her diapers at the level of major companies.

However, her first attempts were unsuccessful until, after two years of research and marketing for her diapers, she was able to sell the entire patent right to Keko for one million dollars - a large sum at that time equivalent to ten million dollars in 2018-.

Later, after it sold the patent to "Kiko", it developed another brand of disposable diapers, and sold it to the international company "Pampers".

At the end of the 1950s, in parallel with her drive to develop amazing inventions, Marion Donovan received a master's degree in architecture from Yale University, and was one of only three women to obtain this academic degree that year.

Over a period of 45 years, between 1951 and 1996 - before her death in 1998 at the age of 81 - Donovan obtained 20 patents in various fields, most of them in household items, whether medical tissues, storage boxes, dental floss, and clothes hangers. Sell ​​it all to multiple companies.

(2, 3)

Anita Roddick, Founder of The Body Shop (social media)

"If you think that you are too little to be able to cause a certain effect ... try to sleep in a place where there is only one mosquito!"

It is very difficult for anyone in this age to be ignorant of the brand "The Body Shop", one of the most important British brands in the world of elegance and beauty products and the well-known cosmetics whose stores are spread almost all over the world.

Today, the "The Body Shop" chain stores more than 1,000 unique products that are sold through more than three thousand stores in 66 countries in the world.

But back in 1976, the date that saw the first "The Body Shop", the beginning was very humble if not shrouded in miserable circumstances as well.

Anita Roddick was thirty-three years old at the time, and the mother of a child and a newborn girl, and her living conditions were not good with her and her husband, which motivated her to start a small business that would be a continuous financial resource for her so that she could provide for her children in a crisis Stifling finances the family is going through.

What commercial project can a thirty-three-year-old start launch so that she can achieve great success in it on the one hand, and not make her distracted from her two children on the other hand?

Anita Roddick has chosen to open a store that sells natural cosmetics, so that she herself manufactures these materials in a healthy way that is comfortable for the skin, and at the same time gives women the usual elegant cosmetic character that appears on them by using the industrial cosmetics that are widely spread in international brands.

In fact, Anita Roddick's choice to start this project was not arbitrary or driven only by her desire to enter this field, but rather came after a wealth of experience in collecting, analyzing and understanding cosmetic tools after she herself traveled around the world voluntarily and compulsorily.

Anita Roddick was born in 1942 to Italian parents who immigrated to Britain, and she did not live in a stable family at all. She studied history and the English language, and worked as a teacher after her graduation, which made her go around the whole world to teach, so she went to Paris, Geneva, South Africa, Mauritius, Madagascar and Tahiti.

Each of these countries lived in the character of its people, especially in terms of cosmetics and the interest of women in certain skin and hair care tools.

Her journeys ended with marrying a Scottish young man who has great interests in work, which motivated her more to convert her ideas into a real project, especially with her husband's permanent travel away from the family, and her feeling of responsibility towards her children with the necessity of working a profitable project.

Anita Roddick decided to open this store based on the many tools and recipes she had collected on her travel abroad, so she took a loan of $ 6,500 and opened her first small store in Brighton next to a funeral home in that city, and began offering 15 of her products for sale.

Anita Roddick with Princess Diana

Anita Roddick also launched a smart marketing movement, as she put her products in specific boxes that make the consumer able to keep the box after using the product, and then return to the store again to refill the box again without having to buy a new box.

This marketing behavior guarantees the win for everyone, as it makes the consumer buy the product at a lower price - because he excluded the price of buying a new box - and makes the store itself save some money in contracting to produce more boxes, and it also makes the consumer interested in returning again to refill the box.

Luck was standing firmly in support of Anita when she opened her first store, as Europe and the Western world were at that time witnessing a revolution against industrial appearances and promoting natural products, which made her rush to open her second store in Chester, only ten months after the opening of her first store, After she noticed consumers pouring into her convenience store.

This success made her husband a strong supporter of her, as they set out a plan to expand the production of more natural cosmetic products on the one hand, and to start expanding the store by selling his trademark "Franchise" in all Britain and the world.

In 1991, and after 15 years of opening the first store for "The Body Shop", the number of stores bearing his trademark reached 700 stores around the world, then jumped to 1980 stores by the year 2004, achieving services for more than 77 million consumers around the world. Its brand is the second most trusted brand in the UK.

Later, the Queen of Britain bestowed on Anita Roddick the title "Dame" in appreciation of her efforts, especially since she announced a huge donation of fifty million pounds to charities.

The Unusual Business, released in 2000, tells the entrepreneurial story of Anita Roddick.

In 2006, it was announced that the French giant, "Loreal", had acquired the "The Body Shop" for 652 million pounds, a deal with which "Anita Roddick" ended her journey in life as she passed away in 2007. Cerebral hemorrhage in her house.

Later, in 2017, L'Oréal sold The Body Shop to Natura for 880 million pounds.

(4, 5, 6, 7)

Perhaps many do not know that Mrs. Fields Cookies, famous in international stores, is in the end sweets whose first recipe came from the hand of a very ordinary American mother, who is considered a model for the American housewife in all its details.

The lady who cooks delicious food, takes care of feeding her children, and makes cakes and baked goods on various holidays to present to guests or accompany her on trips.

The beginning was from a young age, when she had an exceptional interest in cooking in general, and making sweets, cakes and baked goods in particular, to the point that "Debbie Fields" launched a special project for the manufacture of sweets when she was only 12 years old. From her home.

It is surprising that she succeeded in escalating and publishing her project to the point that she was able to buy an old used car, which she turned into something like a mobile shop to sell her products in the area in which she lives.

Then everything stopped. Suddenly, Debbie found herself a bride, then a wife, then a mother. She was not a mother of one child, but gave birth to four children who took all of her time, and her head was no longer occupied only with raising her children and following them, although her skill as a chef of food in general and sweets in particular remained remarkable. , But she did not go beyond an ordinary "mother's skill" in cooking for her husband, children and her guests.

But the old dream did not die. After several years, Deby announced to her husband that she wanted to establish a shop for the manufacture of home sweets that would be a good source of income for the family, but her husband was not enthusiastic about the project, especially since she had already failed to collect funding from the institutions that finance small projects.

Nevertheless, Deby continued her ambition by improving her products better, in parallel with her search for funding for the project.

Finally, Debbie was able to take out a modest financing loan that enabled her to open her first store in 1977, which she called "Mrs. Fields Cookies".

Despite the tremendous problems that met her small shop since the first day of its opening, where she was surprised by the lack of profits and the customers did not hesitate to her shop, she was able to save her project from collapse by making a tight marketing plan that required her to go to places where people gather, as she did when she was young And she offers them sweets at reduced prices.

In the mid-1980s, and nearly seven years after the opening of its first store, the number of candy stores named "Mrs. Fields Bakeries" had reached about 160 branches covering almost the entire United States, along with four other international branches that generate millions of dollars in profits.

With the advent of the nineties, Fields sold her entire company and devoted herself to pursuing her family life on the one hand, writing administrative books and participating in social activities as a prominent entrepreneur on the other hand.

(8, 9, 10)

In the end, it might be said that entrepreneurship for mothers is an easy matter compared to the arduous roles they play throughout their lives in raising children and maintaining a family.

Every successful mother is the seed of a successful entrepreneurial project if she can find the right field and the right timing, and she does not explain that Al-Qattar has missed her in order to achieve her entrepreneurial ambitions.

In fact, "motherhood" in particular is the biggest catalyst for achieving entrepreneurial dreams.

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Sources

  • Inspirational quotes from female entrepreneurs - Forbes 

  • Marion Donovan - Wikipedia

  • Diaper entrepreneur Marion Donovan dies at age of 81 - New York Times

  • Business as unusual book - Amazon

  • The story of the founding of The Body Shop 

  • Anita Roddick - Wikipedia

  • The Body Shop - Wikipedia 

  •  How to build a company worth millions of dollars from home?

    The story of Mrs. Fields Desserts - Forbes

  • Debbie Fields - Wikipedia

  •  Mrs. Fields Sweet Shop - Wikipedia