Coochee-Coo Baby Slings Story – Fenny Tanza

Story by Fenny Tanza – Coochee-Coo Baby Slings Story

I never thought I would one day venture into business world. I had always thought that one needs to be fiercely aggressive to survive in it – someone that I was (and still am) definitely not!

It was my mum’s idea.

‘Why don’t you try selling baby slings?’ she asked me. I was contemplating a change in life then. I had been writing (on freelance basis) for parenting magazines and newspapers for about 5 years. While I truly enjoyed my work, I realized that I had basically covered every single subject about child-raising. Thus, it was time to move on.

But selling baby slings?

‘Why not,” my mum said,” After all, you always got compliments when you carried the kids in the sling!”

True. People often stopped and asked me where I get the baby slings.

Still, the prospect of approaching strangers and making ‘sales talk’ seemed so daunting to me!

Thankfully, a good friend came to the rescue. She suggested that I could start off by putting free advertisements on buy-and-sell websites, such as mudah.com. So I did just that. I bought a few baby slings, took picture of one of  them, and posted it at mudah.com together with my details.

Then I waited. And waited, and waited. No response at all for 3 days. Well, good thing I only bought a few baby slings, I told myself. At least I have given this a try, and don’t have to be haunted with ‘what-if’ questions later on!

Then, to my utter disbelief, somebody (who saw my post at mudah.com) soon e-mailed me and actually wanted to buy my sling! One order led to another, and my small business has been growing slowly and steadily since.

I have since created a website (a painfully long process for a ‘cave woman’ like me!), as well as an FB group, to create more awareness about my baby slings.

Of course, it’s not all happy stories. I have learned the importance of checking my website a few times daily, after I discovered that someone made full use of the ‘comment’ section of my website to advertise cigarettes that he was selling (it was a full page advertisement!). And yes, I had to deal with ‘online backstabbing’ from a fellow baby sling seller recently.

Despite the setbacks, I’ll march forward and see how far I can go in this new journey!

P/S My sincere thank you to Moon and Mompreneur Asia, for providing a great platform to like-minded mums! Excellent job, Moon!

Fenny Tanza
I’m a mother of three (2 girls of 4 and 8 yo, and  7yo boy). I live in Subang Jaya, Selangor. My website is http://coochee-coo.blogspot.com