Chelsea Bee - Where it all began.....

Approx 19 months ago, a woman called Kelly gave birth to a little girl and named her Chelsea.

Chelsea is the inspiration for this story.

Kelly had only just accepted a new job the day she found out she was pregnant. She learnt she was only entitled to 14 weeks paid annual leave and after that she went back to work part time, 3 days a week. She was, however, fortunate enough to be able to leave Chelsea with her sister Michelle during the day. Soon enough the hours progressed into 4 days a week and the company Kelly was working for wanted her to go full time. Unfortunately for them, Kelly wanted to spend more time at home with Chelsea so she decided to look around for another position more suitable.

During this time she was not getting much sleep as Chelsea started waking cold in the middle of the night. The little monkey was kicking off her blankets so Kelly decided to make her a sleeping bag. Kelly researched some fabrics and found some merino wool on Trade me. She liked the unique properties of merino wool with it being able to breathe so bought a pattern from spotlight and sewed a baby sleeping bag for Chelsea.
Success!!!! It worked. Chelsea could kick her legs to her heart was content and couldn’t kick off the blankets! Kelly then made one for her sisters daughter, Brooke (who’s 6 months older) to see if it would help her sleep better. This also worked. Kelly’s sister Michelle was delighted.

Now Kelly had always been ambitious. She had imported shoes a couple of years ago to sell at the market and on Trade me and always wanted to be her own boss. She thought that other mums could benefit from this so she started sewing a few sleeping bags and listing them on Trade me. It didn’t take long for word to spread about these merino sleeping bags and soon Kelly had to use all her time off from work cutting and sewing them. She enlisted the help of her mother in law who also helped sew them with the increase in demand.
Kelly then sourced a merino wool fabric supplier where she went weekly to get rolls of fabric on her days off and sourcing new colours and weights.
By this stage Kelly was cutting and sewing 20-30 bags a week and the demand was increasing by the day so she decided to hire a dressmaker. By doing this Kelly had more time to spend with her daughter and put some effort into promoting the ‘brand’. She named it ‘Chelsea Bee’ after her daughter’s bedroom door. On Chelsea’s door she had a name plaque and a small ‘Bee’ underneath so it read ‘Chelsea Bee’. From there it all just came together.
Not long after, Kelly advertised for another dressmaker to redesign the whole baby sleeping bag for a product review in the ‘Little Treasures’ magazine and it came out on tops. It was classed as one of the ‘Best Sleeping Bags’ and they were happy to see a Made in New Zealand label on them.

Kelly has now found herself a new ‘part time’ job of 20 hours a week for a small Line Mechanic company. From here she met a graphic designer who designed her new Chelsea Bee logo, website and business cards.
She also successfully displayed her products at the 2007 AGS Parent & Child Show.

Her day job has now grown so much over the last 12 months that she is now doing 40 hours a week (4x10 hour days) and she oversees 2 other full time staff in the office.
Kelly continues to run the successful Chelsea Bee label with a couple of new products currently at the designing stage. She has just recently broken into the overseas market and she also runs a household.

Kelly still has a few things up her sleeve for the Chelsea Bee label but she’s not letting on just yet. Be sure to watch out for it…….

If you’d like to know more about Kelly or the Chelsea Bee label, go to the website below.
www.chelseabee.co.nz www.chelseabee.com