Life & Style | People
The woman helping mums to shop smart
When her children shed tears over being the only kids on the block without snazzy bikes, Mona Ataya decided to launch a website to help other busy mothers shop discernibly. Now, less than a year later, her website MumzWorld.com is going global
- By Louisa Wilkins, Features Editor, Aquarius
- Published: 00:00 February 1, 2012
- Image Credit: Grace Paras
- "Mothers instinctively want to give their children the best they can - you feel you need to get all the information about your options, assimilate it and make a decision," says Mona Ataya.
Before... "I'm Palestinian-American and moved to Dubai from the US in 2000 because my family had moved here. I'd been working in marketing since I was fresh out of college, so I managed to get a good job here. In 2001, one of my brothers called me to say he was part of a team that was launching a new recruitment website called Bayt. I left my job and joined them - they had eight people at the time, now they employ more than 400. It was at Bayt, where I learnt about building something from nothing.
It all changed when... "In March 2004, I had twin boys. For the first time in my life, I felt out of my depth - I didn't know which bottles to buy, which bedding was best, which strollers were safest. I think mothers instinctively want to give their children the best they can - you feel like you need to get all the information about all the options, assimilate it and make decisions based on your own needs. I spent hours online researching different brands, creating lists of what I needed and other lists of what I wanted, but 90 per cent of the items weren't sold in the UAE. I ordered a lot online and would give my husband shopping lists when he went abroad on business trips.
"A year after having the twins I went back to work part-time, but when I had my third son in 2007 I stopped working altogether. By April 2011, my children were all at school and I had time on my hands. Bayt invited me back, so I went back to working for them full-time.
"One afternoon, shortly after re-joining Bayt, I was standing, watching my sons outside in the compound garden surrounded by boys on bikes. My children had been asking for bikes for a while, but I had been delaying buying them as I wanted to shop around first to make sure we got the best, safest bikes at a good price. The result was that my boys were the only ones who didn't have bikes. One of my sons came inside in tears... I felt so bad that I put them in the car and went straight to Mall of the Emirates where, because of limited options, I had to splash out Dh3,400 on two bikes, both of which are now broken.
"That was the point of inspiration for me. I thought, ‘Your average mother today has unmet needs. She needs to see a comprehensive range of items at her fingertips, so she can search, compare and buy within minutes and receive it within a few days. She needs to be informed about her options and about what she is buying.' That was when I knew I had to launch something to make this happen... and even if it did nothing else, it would help me be a better mother.
As a result... "Within a few weeks I had a business plan. Some colleagues from Bayt, some of the founders, were interested in investing. That quick in-flow of cash was great. Next, I needed a solid team... I used Bayt and found some really great people. By the end of August, we had the technical side of the website finished, all the legalities in place and we had all the products and vendors organised. I was juggling work and home life, looking after the kids and then sitting down to work when they were in bed until 3am. It was crazy, but once you have an idea, you just want to get it started. We worked hard and launched MumzWorld on October 9.
Since then... "It's going really well - we've exceeded our expectations on all levels. We had just under 150,000 people visit our site in the first two months and 7,000 people making transactions. We have eight people adding new products to the site every day and we're launching a new and improved website, as well as an Arabic site, too. Are we where we want to be? Not even close yet... At present we have just short of 35,000 items on offer - we're just about to launch lots more, with top-selling books from a publishers in the US and new clothes ranges, so that figure will go up again.
"Also, we are starting to deliver further afield... even though we are UAE-centric we've had orders from the UK and Australia for items that are out of stock there. We also want to encourage mothers to visit our blog so we can have a dialogue with them about their needs, and we're going to be starting live chats with parenting experts. Also, we're pushing our gift registry service for birthdays and for grandparents living abroad. For my sons, their pocket money is credit on the site, so each month they get a certain amount each to spend.
Moving on... "Plans for the future? Just to keep the customers happy with competitive prices and the best customer service that we can offer. We have a full team of just over 20 great people, so everything is going really well. I'm still juggling work and family life - fitting in work time around school runs, homework and bedtimes. My husband helps me a lot and generally my days start very early and end very late - but I'm enjoying every minute of it."
Visit www.mumzworld.com.
Do you know an inspirational woman? Let us know by emailing aquariusedit@alnisrmedia.com.
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