Joy and Joe® baby 6th anniversary speech

​6th Anniversary speech
In the beginning, we were inspired by the huge benefits that a close skin to skin gave our own children especially while they were poorly and we then created our own range of stretchy wraps to fill this gap because of the added advantage of a pre-tie that stretchy wraps have.
After a few years, we started getting lots of inquires from customers with older babies and toddlers so we responded by entering into the world of woven baby slings. We started with mixed blends maxi-roses and we then moved on to the highly sought after SMPs.
 
Our biggest achievements came when we employed the services of one of the highly experienced UK textile experts and together, we created a special weave that had never been experienced before in the world of babywearing. A double layered weave that felt and wrapped like merino wool yet woven with high quality natural cotton yarns.
 
Our fountain of love launch was huge and the feedback has been fantastic. In 2015, we entered into the prestigious business competition organised by the University of Manchester and we won the first prize.
 
Despite our monumental growth, we are still a family business as our priority asides manufacturing beautiful and high quality British made slings is to nurture our children with all our might. We knew that with their complex special needs, they will need long term care and we wanted to be involved in the lives of children 100%, so a typical 9-5 job would never suit our type of family.
 
Today, we have so much peace above anything else and our children are moving beautifully in the right direction. All these won't have been achievable without your continued and loyal support, here's a heartfelt thank you from us.
A more comprehensive timeline of our achievements so far:
 
Around 2010, we started making stretchy wraps from our conservatory. This was in addition to the craft items we made at the time and it included items such as bibs and washable wipes etc
 
Around 2011, we started as subsidiary of Goodprice limited (owned by Mayor Osundeko) and our stretchy wrap fan base grew exponentially so we stopped making baby wipes and bibs. At this stage, we scored 3.5/5 in the UK bizziebaby awards. We started donating a percentage of our proceed to the down's syndrome association and several other smaller UK charities.
 
Bisi, director of Joy and Joe trained and became a babywearing consultant. Her current areas of interest are babywearing disabled children and her future aspiration is to create more awareness for babywearing with a Yoruba kanga-like textile called 'OJA' i.e (ethnic babywearing). Her plan is to go from sling library to library to demonstrate how this has to be correctly done.
 
Around, 2012, we moved into our own eCommerce platform and social media platforms. We won multiple awards for our stretchy wraps, we finally won bizziebaby gold awards with our score jumping to 4.7/5. These were assessed by a team of mums randomly selected and completely anonymous to us. We also received over 53 positive reviews and mentions from notable UK mummy bloggers including a 5 star rating by geeky mama.
 
We then added woven wraps to our collection of baby slings. We wanted sturdier slings for people whose babies have outgrown our stretchy wraps. The maxi-roses, blackberry ripple and SMP was born. We started weaving with one of the UK most talented artisan weavers run by a father and son team.
 
In 2014, we took on our own company accountant and lawyer. We became a UK limited liability company and our brand name Joy and Joe baby became a registered trademark. We then took on another weaving house to boost our production and our SMP noir was born. We also launched a vlog series called #carrymyjoy chronicles. We also stepped our tailoring up further by employing the service of a highly experienced tailoring house based in Rochdale, UK.
We were invited to the Manchester children's hospital to present our slings to the staff and parents in the NICU and we donated some of our stretches to the NICU ward.
 
In 2015, we then won the first prize venture further awards and moved into our own office premises. We were also featured in the highly sought after documentary. We launched our high end fountain of love wraps and our quirky wooden keepsake boxes were introduced.
Around December 2015, we launched our very first ambassador program for 2016 and we are so proud of the the family relationship that we all share. We have so many aspirations for the future and putting this together has given us the re-assurance that we have indeed come a long way considering our very humble beginnings.
This year, we welcomed our 2017 ambassadors. We moved into our new ultra-modern HQ that we named ‘ The Joy and Joe babywearing gallery ’  and  our official launch event was officiated by the Mayor and Mayoress of ST Helens. Products wise, we have branched into blankets / throws, bamboo stretchy wraps and our soft structured carrier (soon to be released). Joy and Joe founder, Adebisi was also nominated for ' the talk of Manchester' business awards under the ‘Female entrepreneur of the year’ category.

We couldn’t have achieved all of the above without your loyal support and patronage. We also appreciate our fantastic team of admins and ambassadors. Our admin and ambassadors play a huge role in maintaining the fun and loving relationship that we have within the Joy and Joe wrap family. If you are completely new to Joy and Joe, why not join our chatter page so that we can get to know you. Our admins and ambassadors will certainly make you feel very welcome.
 
To ensure that you stay in the loop, why not sign up to our newsletters as well. We are also always searching for talents, if you have any suggestions on how we can collaborate, please get in touch. In a few months time, we will be opening our doors to our 2018 ambassadors. How exciting! For the future, we are working on some really fun projects that we will be announcing on our chatter page from time to time.
Thank you all so much and keep on carrying your joy with love.
Cheers,
Bisi Osundeko
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