In order to effectively resurrect her baby carrier business, Chinmayie Bhat, the company’s creator, recounts how she overcame hardships and a personal loss. Bhat was able to revive the brand despite the epidemic seeing a significant decline in sales.
While most business owners hope for quick success, Chinmayie Bhat, the creator of the baby carrier company Soulslings, has had to deal with the pains of expanding too quickly too soon. She and her husband Ravindra founded Soulslings in 2014, and the company immediately became successful, selling about 1600 baby carriers each month all over the world. The COVID-19 epidemic, though, stopped its expansion. The foreign sales of Soulslings, which made up around 80% of the company’s revenue, virtually disappeared overnight. Bhat also lost Ravindra to depression in 2021, which left her in charge of managing the company and raising two kids. SMBStory is quoted by the woman as saying, “Ravindra was managing all the manufacturing operations, we even had offices and warehouses in Singapore, plus company registered in Malaysia, USA and Europe which he was handling, but in a blink of an eye all that was gone.” Bhat has actively worked to revitalise her once-thriving business over the past two years. Her sales have increased by 20% over the past year, from zero in 2020 to 500–600 baby carriers sold each month. This rise has been especially encouraging for her.
How Soulslings was made Ring slings, a baby wrap with rings that eliminates the need for tying, were produced by the company to begin with.
Back then, Bhat and her husband would use fabric that was readily available locally to produce small batches of ring slings and sell them via a Facebook group. The ring sling we were giving could not be found in India at the time since it was a Facebook world. In fact, I was looking for a baby carrier that would fit my lifestyle when I was pregnant with my second child and was inspired to create the ring sling since I couldn’t find any,” explains Bhat. When Bhat discovered a company manufacturing the ideal baby carrier in the US and had to import it, her search for the ideal carrier came to a conclusion. Bhat then recognised that despite being an excellent parenting tool, baby carriers are scarce in India. She established her own company to meet this market need. We observed a significant demand because this product was unique in the market, according to Bhat. Bhat had established distribution and retail networks throughout the nation, including the US, Europe, Singapore, and Malaysia, as the majority of the orders would be placed from outside India. The baby carriers by Soulslings are made of kid-friendly cotton and linen. The company also sells the unique AseemA carrier, which can be used by both newborns and babies up to four years old.
Products are priced between Rs. 1,149 and Rs. 8,000. reviving the company in nearly 30 countries, Soulslings sold a variety of baby carriers for newborns, toddlers, and babies between 2014 and 2019. Bhat felt the brand had developed too quickly and had failed to create a presence in India, a failure that kept it back during the lockdown as the epidemic decimated Soulslings’ foreign sales. Bhat had a difficult task ahead of him to revive the firm in India once the market had opened up. She first created an online identity and started a D2C (direct-to-consumer) business. website, as well as reconnecting with her clientele. Since the epidemic, we have begun investing in social media ad campaigns, which were previously unheard of, adds Bhat. “Growth doesn’t come easily these days. Since then, companies including Luvlap, Kol Kol, and Butt Baby have entered the Indian baby carrier market, eroding the first-mover advantage held by Bhat. Bhat claims that there is still opportunity for improvement and that her business is launching a new line of child carriers. The infant carrier market is anticipated to develop at a CAGR (compound annual growth rate) of 5.08% over the following five years, according to Mordor Intelligence. When asked about her future plans, Bhat states that she is collaborating with a hospital to host a session on baby wearing for expectant women. In order to restart their export chain and rebuild the company she had lost; Bhat is also re-establishing contact with distribution and retail channels on a global scale. She continues, “I want Soulslings to return to the international market soon.
