For entrepreneur Assie Khoussa, the boundaries between work and private life are nearly nonexistent. A few of this industriousness comes from necessity – operating a child model as a single mom isn’t any straightforward feat, requiring Assie to be in work mode 24/7. However, the success of her small enterprise additionally stems from Assie’s skill to point out up as herself one hundred pc of the time. In actual fact, Eizzy Child originated due to the entrepreneur’s relatability.
“Eizzy Child actually began from me sharing issues that I used to be utilizing each day with my son and pondering nothing of it,” Assie stated. “I used to be occurring my private web page on Instagram, sharing ‘I simply bought this snack cup,’ After which all my father or mother pals had 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 offer sturdy and unhazardous merchandise that make mother and father’ lives simpler and easier. And whereas Eizzy Child has seen a variety of success, it hasn’t all the time 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 clients.
Should you ask Assie what her recreation plan has been, she’ll inform you that there is no such thing as a grand technique she follows. And that’s what’s most refreshing about Eizzy Child – its progress can principally be credited to Assie’s authenticity. She’s simply linked together with her clients by Instagram by sharing her personal experiences as a mom, utilizing only a few paid promoting and advertising efforts.
This realness seeps into all the things Assie does and is an enormous purpose why she resonates with so many, together with Tracy Jabbal, one in every of Eizzy Child’s longtime clients.
“To assist an actual individual — you get such a unique sense of [Assie] and the way she’s taking good care of [her son] Noah and needs to do good for herself and have a productive, profitable enterprise,” Tracy stated.
And whereas Assie’s actuality as a single mother and small-business proprietor could not all the time be image good, the entrepreneur has no intention of filtering herself.
“Instagram tends to be so good,” she stated. “I reside 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 clients would purchase up her merchandise like hotcakes…till they didn’t. This preliminary miscalculation didn’t cease her, nonetheless.
“I all the time had a variety of grit,” Assie stated. “I do not actually take no for a solution, particularly when it’s one thing I would like 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 together 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 bought her model up and operating, she encountered advertising 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 everyone that got here to me, and was like, ‘hey, I can do that for what you are promoting. And I may try this.’ That was onerous for me,” Assie stated. “I misplaced some huge cash that approach.”
Rapidly, nonetheless, Assie discovered to depend on herself, and to at the present time, she manages each side of Eizzy Child – from advertising to purchasing to customer support – on her personal. As an entrepreneur, she’s additionally resourceful and takes benefit of free coaching at any time when attainable, like when she not too long ago participated in a reside web site audit that Shopify supplied to small companies.
Ultimately, Assie was in a position to rent her first worker, who helped with Eizzy Child’s social media and weblog. Nonetheless, 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 stated. “After which return to determining how I may be extra artistic and provides myself the okay to proceed to point out up as myself.”
With practically 5,000 followers, Eizzy Child’s Instagram account is the place Assie connects together with her clients essentially the most – often on Instagram Tales or by her many Reels. For Tracy, Assie’s depiction of sure parenting conditions – just like the wrestle of hiding snacks out of your youngsters – was simply one of many causes she turned a fan of the model.
“[Assie] does a variety of actually humorous, tremendous relatable Reels and polls,” Tracy stated. “And as a mom, I can actually hook up with that. You get this sense she’s such a real individual.”
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 just isn’t the one platform the place Assie has cultivated this type of relationship together with her clients. 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 mother and father and introduce her model as an answer to a number of the challenges they face. This aligns together with her aim to create merchandise that may finally assist mothers and dads spend extra time with their youngsters.
“The theme for all of my merchandise is easy and straightforward,” Assie stated. “Like, simply lower off as a lot stress as attainable. So [Eizzy Baby products] make your life as a mother and as a father or mother just a bit bit simpler.”
Not solely do clients take pleasure in Assie’s social media presence, however in addition they genuinely like Eizzy Child’s merchandise. As a mother of kids ages two and 5 years previous, Tracy has examined dozens of child manufacturers from the U.S. and Europe and has but to seek out one which’s stood as much as Eizzy Child. Particularly, 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 all the things else,” Tracy stated.
By being weak 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 together with her followers.
“I observed that at any time when I present up — it is simply me. No eyebrows on, nothing. I get extra engagement, I get extra love, I get extra assist, I get extra patrons,” she stated. “The perfect half is I get to have this enterprise and nonetheless be a mother, nonetheless be myself, and nonetheless present the recent mess that occurs within the background.”
Whereas operating a small enterprise is already hectic sufficient, it was nonetheless necessary for Assie to incorporate a charitable element to her model. On Eizzy Child’s homepage is a tab for a company referred to as Angel Home Worldwide, which supplies assets for younger girls in Uganda.
Assie first labored with Angel Home Worldwide years earlier when she was part of a neighborhood basis that offered meals on wheels and different providers to her neighborhood. There, she watched a presentation on the group and discovered concerning the difficulties dealing with 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 baby. I had no worries,” Assie stated. “And I could not think about having somebody undergo a few of these issues.”
As soon as Eizzy Child was up and operating, Assie knew she needed to assist 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 impression into her model was a pure transfer for the small-business proprietor.
“It was seamless. I’ve labored with [Angel House International] up to now and fell in love with the group,” Assie stated. “It was simply one thing I may do to create impression each single day with our gross sales.”
Although Eizzy Child supplies mother and father 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.
