The BabyHub SleepSpace, developed by Catherine Curtis, is one of the big success stories of the Jersey Innovation Fund, which provided grants to start-ups before it was frozen last year following concerns about how the fund had been managed by the States.
BabyHub paid back the £60,000 it had been loaned in full last year and thanked Islanders for helping to fund a creative business.
Now, Mrs Curtis has achieved another milestone with her award-winning product. She has secured a deal for it to be sold in Mothercare stores throughout the British Isles.
She said: ‘I’ve always wanted to see my product for sale in Mothercare. I remember as a young mum buying all my baby’s things from there. Since the early stages of working on BabyHub I’ve had many meetings with the buyers and they’ve helped develop BabyHub SleepSpace. It’s going to be great to see BabyHub in Mothercare.’
The SleepSpace is a multi-functional safe space that can be used as a travel cot, play area, insect-free zone and children’s play teepee. It has been designed so that it can be easily opened and moved, even while holding a baby.
Mrs Curtis, who came up with the idea for a travel cot for part of her Open University degree in innovation several years ago, says the product can be assembled and moved or packed away while a parent or carer is holding a baby.
Her company has also teamed up with ayzh, a social enterprise based in India that creates innovative and essential healthcare products to improve the health and wellbeing of women and girls throughout their reproductive lives.
For every SleepSpace bought, BabyHub will buy one clean birth kit for a woman in a developing country.
The kits are known as Janma and are designed by ayzh, which was founded by women’s health advocate Zubaida Bai.
Mrs Curtis said: ‘We feel very passionate about the work that Zubaida and her company do to support women and girls in less privileged countries and ensure their health is of the utmost importance during child birth and after. We wanted to show our support with a birth kit donation for every SleepSpace purchased.’
The kits include six simple tools recommended by the World Health Organisation to ensure sanitation and sterility. They have been designed to reduce risk of infection and bring down newborn mortality rates.
