Meet founders: Early Birdies
Early Birdies is an innovative online multi-brand clothing store for children and teens. We talked to Lisa and George, founders of Early Birdies, to find out more about their business and the big idea behind it. The team is now ...
Early Birdies is an innovative online multi-brand clothing store for children and teens. We talked to Lisa and George, founders of Early Birdies, to find out more about their business and the big idea behind it. The team is now in their second year building a children-market company that is literally being built by the actual children. Well, to be fair, not only by children; some adults – including founders Lisa and George – have to help out too!
Both Lisa and George have impressive professional and educational backgrounds. Lisa has more than ten years of experience in the fashion industry and eCommerce under her belt. She held senior positions at Wikimart and Little Gentrys and developed an educational course ‘Children's fashion brand’. Today Lisa is the Managing Partner at Early Birdies and is responsible for day-to-day operations, general management and company finances, supplier relations, assortment mix, and the development of multi-brand functional capsules.
As a student, George studied physics and financial management. He spent most of his career in advertising. George founded and managed his own advertising agency for over 13 years, managed the advertising agency of Basic Element Ltd, and worked with GAZ Group, Ingosstrakh, Glavstroy as clients. He is a marketing expert and a business coach. Now George is the CMO at Early Birdies and is responsible for marketing, web analytics, conversion metrics, CAC and the involvement of teenagers in implementing business tasks.
How did you come up with the idea for Early Birdies?
George: Early Birdies is where our skills intersected with our interests. Lisa had an excellent experience in the children's premium eCom (Little Gentrys online multi-brand store). I was always into working with children and teenagers. Besides, my advertising agency TMP was a contractor for Little Gentrys store for several years, so Lisa and I had been a tight-knit team even before we started Early Birdies. We are also the parents of beautiful daughters – Lisa has two, and I have one. We had the chance to put the idea of our business into practice – our children became the first participants of the Early Birdies Practices, and that is how we knew we were on the right path. When the idea with Practices was “tested” on our kids, we decided to create a big project to encourage enthusiastic children and teenagers to solve real business tasks, gain valuable business experience and earn pocket money. This was worth doing!
Lisa: Another big idea behind the project is a choice of clothes, shoes, and accessories made by children completely independently of their parents. Parents allocate an acceptable budget for the purchase and do not interfere with their children's decisions. After the choice is made, parents let children explain the reasons for their choice – to consolidate newly acquired skills. This approach gives children the opportunity to make their own mistakes related to spending money and learn how to make meaningful decisions and choices. The idea is deep but it has not been developed yet. We are thinking of redesigning it and bringing it to life in the future.
Lisa and George, Co-founders of Early Birdies
What is the idea behind Early Birdies Practices? How does it work?
Lisa: At Early Birdies, we have a goal to create a fundamentally new approach to interaction with our customers. It is not about parents who usually buy clothes for children. It is about users – children and teenagers. We delegate actual business tasks to children (of course, only those they can cope with). We call this project Early Birdies Practices. At each lesson, we give a bit of theory, outline the task, define criteria for evaluating the quality of the result. The foundation of classes is practice – children independently solving a business task. We are always ready to help, but never interfere with the process – we want the kids to realize their full potential! All our layouts, slogans, content, and even the ideas for new Practices are created by children. This is the opportunity for them to carry out real projects and earn pocket money completely on their own.
George: Now we are even collaborating with two young designers and a copywriter. Vika (20 years old, a 3rd-year student) does most of the design for us and has been working for Early Birdies for about a year. Leia (17 years old, still studies at school) does part of the design and photo content. Kira (15 years old) writes part of the texts and helps our team create slogans.
Why is it important to develop hard skills from an early age?
George: We do not seek to develop hard skills – this is more in the scope of schools and various courses. We also do not plan to create a methodological base for teaching teenagers at this time. The idea of Practices is learning by doing or edutainment, to some degree (children still see Practices as a game). Here they can try to put into practice what they have already learned.
What are your further plans for the development of Early Birdies Practices?
Lisa: We are planning to produce new content, increase the number of Practices, actively involve new children and teenagers, and drive the communication about it. In the near future, we want to launch new communication channels and collaborate with development programs that help children build hard skills. It’s just a wish for now, but starting a long-term program that helps children and teens develop digital opinion leaders’ skills is what we also intend to do.
What do you like most about your work?
George: We see kids participating in our Practices sparkling with what we call “shiny eyes”. This excitement together with actual digital proof of the kids’ professional evolution is what we appreciate most about our work. Thanks to their energy (they have a lot of it), our experience, which helps to lead this energy in the right creative direction, and most importantly, the opportunity to solve real business tasks, they grow incredibly fast. Because of their age, our teenage team members usually work on "design-type" projects and not on the day-to-day operational workload. In our case, kids create layouts, mottos and slogans, take photos and build up communication ideas, which can then be used in actual daily operations. It inspires them! On top of that, they earn pocket money. It is cool!
Lisa: And, of course, we love receiving positive reviews, photos and videos from our beloved customers.
The photoshoot with real customers as models.
At Scramble, we are super excited about the unique and innovative idea of Early Birdies! If you also see amazing potential in this model and the team, you’re welcome to go ahead and join their funding round on Scramble this December!
To participate in the Early Birdies' financing round, visit scrambleup.com and sign up for an investor account (this usually takes just a few minutes). Our community team will then follow up to keep you updated on the financing round details and help you navigate the process.
