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An organic gift set for a newborn comprising a sleepsuit, bib & mits.
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About Us
I am the founder and director of Lullaby Babies and I want to thank you for dropping by.
Lullaby Babies formerly specialised in the creation and production of personalised, audio-products for babies and young children. Our company ethos was derived from the customer perspective with a strong belief in coupling outstanding customer service with a unique product range that offered superior quality and value for money.
From two years worth of experience in the industry, I discovered there was a real gap in the baby-market for a retail store like ours that put customers before profit margins. I had a vision for where I wanted the business to go and this involved maintaining our strong belief in customer service but expanding the product range to offer a variety of the finest baby-products from around the world.
I wanted to build a boutique that took real pride in its product range. By personally researching, sourcing and testing every product, I knew that customers would come to trust the brands and items that we sold.
Unscrupulous manufacturers and marketeers have capitalised on the recent surge for organic products and by using vague words such as ‘natural’, ‘pure’, ‘green’ and ‘herbal’, they often mislead customers into thinking their products are better than they actually are. This is why I felt the time-investment in sourcing the very best products was so imperative for the success of this boutique.
Our existing customer base will be pleased to know that we still create and manufacture our own line of unique products as well. We do this with the same pride and attention to detail as ever, but now we can also offer the variety that modern consumers desire.
I am delighted that this online boutique is now open and the next step for the business is to open a small number of high-street counterparts.
Our Story
The journey that led me to open Lullaby Babies was far from ordinary and makes very good reading! I want to share it with you because I believe you have the right to know not only where the products we offer come from, but where our company comes from as well.
Before I launched the business, I was a professional singer, songwriter and musician and I enjoyed some great successes both here in the UK and internationally. After several years however, life on the road began to put a strain on my personal life. As a barrister, my partner would leave the house every morning at 6am which was when I was just coming home! I grew tired of only seeing her as we passed on drive-way and I started thinking carefully about a change in career direction. I knew I wanted to start my own business but I didn’t have a clue about how to do it!
As a musician, I have always been astounded by the sheer power of music and its ability to lift and energise the emotional state of the listener. Conversely, I have also found the calming and relaxing ability of certain pieces of music fascinating. I wanted to create a business that could utilize this great power but I did not know how it could be done.
It was actually on-stage that the answer came to me. One summer evening in Majorca, I was performing in a concert to an audience of over four thousand. For the penultimate song in the set, my band spontaneously invited the children in the audience to join us on stage. It was for an uptempo number and thus was fairly effortless for me to make the song visually entertaining as the kids were quite content to jump around and dance along with the music.
What the band and I did not anticipate however, was that a few of the children would
quickly acquire a a taste for the limelight and refuse to leave the stage for the
next song! Unfortunately, the last song in the set that evening was a ballad and
therefore was far too slow a tempo for the kids to dance to. I knew the song wouldn't
hold their attention and I became concerned that the stage would quickly deteriorate
into a playground. The song was the Barry Manilow/Westlife hit, 'Mandy' and on the
spur of the moment, we decided to change the lyrics in the chorus to include the
first names of the children who were still on stage (instead of Mandy's). To my delight,
this simply gesture was met with emphatic applause and cheers from the audience and
I will never forget the look on the faces of the children and their parents as we
performed the song for them. I remember thinking, "If I could bottle this, I'd have
my business!"
Before my career in music began, I attended the University of Manchester and acquired a strong degree in Biology. Even though my passion for science somewhat dissipated over the years, to this day I am still being sent copies of the latest research projects.
Shortly after the 'Mandy' episode, I was sent a very interesting report that detailed a study that was conducted into the effects of playing lullabies to babies. Little did I know this study was going to provide the other half of the inspiration for my business!
Parents have long been aware of the soothing effects that lullabies can have on babies but I remember being surprised that the study I had been sent was able to prove this scientifically. Even more impressive however, were the range of positive physical and psychological advantages that the lullabies were shown to have on the babies in the study. Published in the International Journal of Arts Medicine, this study described how babies in a newborn intensive-care unit showed significant improvements when they were exposed to four days of a simple music medicine regimen. They had reduced heart rates, increased oxygen saturation and reduced stress behaviours. They also showed long-term progress and were healthy enough to leave the hospital an average of nearly three days earlier than babies in the control group.
More research is needed into why playing lullabies to babies can have such positive effects. It has been suggested the slow, rhythmic melodies encourage the brainwave activity found during REM sleep. However, cynics argue that the positive effects in the aforementioned study were more likely due to the lullaby CD blocking out the disturbing and noisy hustle and bustle of the hospital, allowing those babies to get a better quality of sleep and thus recover more quickly.
Regardless of the reasons why lullabies can help aid sleeping, the important fact is that they do. Now, I'm not saying that lullabies instantly put every baby to sleep every single time, but they definitely can help. I would actually be very concerned about the potential dangers of any product, audio or otherwise, that was powerful enough to induce sleeping every time because babies have essential night-time needs that should never be suppressed. For me, therefore, lullabies are one of the only safe but effective ways of helping babies sleep.
In March 2007 I was awarded first place in a prestigious international song-writing competition. However, I decided that I wanted to use my unique abilities to do something original, rather than committing to a career in commercial song-writing. I decided to write a selection of original lullabies to build a business around. I developed the music in accordance with the known scientific theories about what components (rhythm, timing, pitch etc.) were most effective at safely helping to aid a baby's sleeping patterns.
I thought back to that one summer's evening in Majorca and recalled the immense joy on the parents' faces as I sang to their children on stage. I decided that the lullabies I was designing could potentially elicit the same response if they were personalized for each baby. I knew they would therefore make wonderful gifts for any of the numerous baby-related gifting occasions as well as making effective sleeping aids. After a great deal of hard work in product development, the lullabies were eventually finished and I had a business and a product range that I was very proud of.
The aforementioned research study referred to the babies that were not in the control group as ‘The Lullaby Babies’ and, because they were my inspiration, I named the company after them.
As I discussed in the opening paragraph, the decision to expand the product range and open this boutique was a very natural progression and after you sample our products, I’m sure you’ll agree it was the right one!
Thanks for reading!
Director/Owner Lullaby Babies