For entrepreneur Assie Khoussa, the boundaries between work and private life are nearly nonexistent. A few of this industriousness comes from necessity – working a child model as a single mom is not any simple feat, requiring Assie to be in work mode 24/7. However, the success of her small enterprise additionally stems from Assie’s potential to indicate up as herself one hundred pc of the time. In reality, Eizzy Child originated due to the entrepreneur’s relatability.
“Eizzy Child actually began from me sharing issues that I used to be utilizing day by day with my son and considering nothing of it,” Assie mentioned. “I used to be occurring my private web page on Instagram, sharing ‘I simply received this snack cup,’ After which all my mother or father associates have been like, ‘Wow, the place did you get it from?’”
In 2020, amid a pandemic, Assie formally launched Eizzy Child and began promoting silicone bibs, snack cups, and suction plates, amongst different objects. A core tenet for the model is to supply sturdy and unhazardous merchandise that make dad and mom’ lives simpler and less complicated. And whereas Eizzy Child has seen a number of success, it hasn’t at all times been a straightforward street for Assie, the small enterprise’s one and solely worker. Nonetheless, two years in, Eizzy Child has already received over tons of loyal prospects.
When you ask Assie what her recreation plan has been, she’ll inform you that there isn’t a grand technique she follows. And that’s what’s most refreshing about Eizzy Child – its progress can largely be credited to Assie’s authenticity. She’s simply related along with her prospects via Instagram by sharing her personal experiences as a mom, utilizing only a few paid promoting and advertising and marketing efforts.
This realness seeps into the whole lot Assie does and is a giant motive why she resonates with so many, together with Tracy Jabbal, one in all Eizzy Child’s longtime prospects.
“To help an actual particular person — you get such a special sense of [Assie] and the way she’s caring for [her son] Noah and needs to do good for herself and have a productive, profitable enterprise,” Tracy mentioned.
And whereas Assie’s actuality as a single mother and small-business proprietor could not at all times be image good, the entrepreneur has no intention of filtering herself.
“Instagram tends to be so good,” she mentioned. “I dwell extra of a TikTok life the place it is uncooked, uncut, unedited.”
At first, Assie needed to promote diaper luggage. She ordered a ton of stock and thought prospects would purchase up her merchandise like hotcakes…till they didn’t. This preliminary miscalculation didn’t cease her, nonetheless.
“I at all times had a number of grit,” Assie mentioned. “I do not actually take no for a solution, particularly when it’s one thing I need in life. So I simply picked again up and tried one thing completely different.”
She remembered particular objects that she had casually shared on her Instagram Tales – together with child plates – that appeared to resonate most along with her followers. This catapulted what would change into Eizzy Child, however there have been nonetheless some hurdles Assie needed to overcome. Particularly, the entrepreneur wished that she trusted herself extra when Eizzy Child was in its infancy.
As she received her model up and working, she encountered advertising and marketing and PR businesses who tried to persuade Assie they’d Eizzy Child’s finest curiosity at coronary heart.
“After I first began, I used to be believing in all people that got here to me, and was like, ‘hey, I can do that for your online business. And I may do this.’ That was arduous for me,” Assie mentioned. “I misplaced some huge cash that approach.”
Shortly, nonetheless, Assie discovered to depend on herself, and to today, she manages each side of Eizzy Child – from advertising and marketing to purchasing to customer support – on her personal. As an entrepreneur, she’s additionally resourceful and takes benefit of free coaching each time doable, like when she lately participated in a dwell web site audit that Shopify supplied to small companies.
Finally, Assie was in a position to rent her first worker, who helped with Eizzy Child’s social media and weblog. Nevertheless, within the spring of 2022, the enterprise slowed down, and Assie needed to reduce and let her first worker go. This additionally coincided with Assie’s birthday and a time when the mother and enterprise proprietor was feeling extraordinarily burned out. Whereas this second was irritating, the entrepreneur picked herself again up.
“I simply gave myself grace… I allowed myself to fall,” Assie mentioned. “After which return to determining how I may be extra artistic and provides myself the okay to proceed to indicate up as myself.”
With almost 5,000 followers, Eizzy Child’s Instagram account is the place Assie connects along with her prospects essentially the most – often on Instagram Tales or via her many Reels. For Tracy, Assie’s depiction of sure parenting conditions – just like the battle of hiding snacks out of your children – was simply one of many causes she grew to become a fan of the model.
“[Assie] does a number of actually humorous, tremendous relatable Reels and polls,” Tracy mentioned. “And as a mom, I can actually connect with that. You get this sense she’s such a real particular person.”
However the entrepreneur additionally makes use of social media to gather buyer suggestions and opinions on new colours and designs for her snack cups and bibs. She’s even joked that she owes all her Instagram followers a sure share of the earnings since they’ve helped form so many Eizzy Child merchandise. On this approach, Assie has been constructing in public and together with her neighborhood in on her small enterprise’s journey.
And Instagram isn’t the one platform the place Assie has cultivated this sort of relationship along with her prospects. She’s additionally used Fb Teams, particularly parenting ones, to attach with like-minded people. By becoming a member of these on-line areas, Assie has been in a position to community with dad and mom and introduce her model as an answer to a number of the challenges they face. This aligns along with her objective to create merchandise that can in the end assist mothers and dads spend extra time with their children.
“The theme for all of my merchandise is easy and simple,” Assie mentioned. “Like, simply lower off as a lot stress as doable. So [Eizzy Baby products] make your life as a mother and as a mother or father just a bit bit simpler.”
Not solely do prospects get pleasure from Assie’s social media presence, however additionally they genuinely like Eizzy Child’s merchandise. As a mother of kids ages two and 5 years outdated, Tracy has examined dozens of child manufacturers from the U.S. and Europe and has but to search out one which’s stood as much as Eizzy Child. Specifically, she particularly appreciates the Snack Cup’s collapsible design and spill proof performance.
“Of all of the issues that we have tried, from Goal, Amazon, shops in Europe, [Eizzy Baby’s] stuff has simply been favorites when it comes to sturdiness and longevity. It is outlasted the whole lot else,” Tracy mentioned.
By being susceptible and sharing each the ups and downs of parenthood, Assie has been in a position to efficiently promote her model, however extra importantly, she’s additionally constructed a neighborhood along with her followers.
“I observed that each time I present up — it is simply me. No eyebrows on, nothing. I get extra engagement, I get extra love, I get extra help, I get extra consumers,” she mentioned. “The very best half is I get to have this enterprise and nonetheless be a mother, nonetheless be myself, and nonetheless present the new mess that occurs within the background.”
Whereas working a small enterprise is already hectic sufficient, it was nonetheless vital for Assie to incorporate a charitable part to her model. On Eizzy Child’s homepage is a tab for a corporation known as Angel Home Worldwide, which supplies sources for younger girls in Uganda.
Assie first labored with Angel Home Worldwide years earlier when she was part of an area basis that offered meals on wheels and different companies to her neighborhood. There, she watched a presentation on the group and discovered concerning the difficulties going through many Ugandan women and younger girls, together with rising up in poverty, coping with gender discrimination and sexual violence, and having to drop out of faculty at a younger age.
“Rising up in Senegal, I felt so free as a toddler. I had no worries,” Assie mentioned. “And I could not think about having somebody undergo a few of these issues.”
As soon as Eizzy Child was up and working, Assie knew she needed to help this trigger in any approach she may. After studying the group was constructing a facility and dormitory for the women, Assie began promoting Angel Home Worldwide’s Beads of Hope – bracelets made by the women themselves – on Eizzy Child’s website and social media. one hundred pc of the contributions from the beads go on to serving to and empowering women in Uganda. Together with spreading the phrase about Angel Home Worldwide, Assie has donated proceeds from sure Eizzy Child gross sales to the group.
Incorporating this social affect into her model was a pure transfer for the small-business proprietor.
“It was seamless. I’ve labored with [Angel House International] prior to now and fell in love with the group,” Assie mentioned. “It was simply one thing I may do to create affect each single day with our gross sales.”
Although Eizzy Child supplies dad and mom with non-toxic and ethically sourced merchandise, it is clear that for Assie, her model is about a lot greater than that. It is a approach for her to attach with different mothers, elevate consciousness for deserving causes, and most significantly, an area for the entrepreneur to be her true self.
