We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Ashley Hauge. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Ashley below.

Ashley, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. Let’s kick things off with your mission – what is it and what’s the story behind why it’s your mission?

The mission behind Made For Mama Shop is creating handcrafted goods to uplift, empower and bring you joy on your motherhood journey.

Motherhood is hard. There are hard days, challenging times, lots of exhaustion and lots of people relying on you, and there are also a lot of happy moments in between all of that. My hope is that the goods in our shop will bring more happiness into your hearts and homes.

As I grow the company, I look to things in my journey of motherhood that I love and can’t live without, in hopes that others can feel the same way. Coffee is the way I start my day. It is my daily pick-me-up and often the only time I get a few minutes of quiet. I love being able to open my cupboard and being able to pick the right coffee mug with the right words on it for that day and what I’m going through. I want to be able to create those mugs to help other moms get through those tough days.

The goods in our shop are all designed by me and/or hand chosen by me. I am working behind the scenes to create more items to have in the shop to uplift and make moms feel good.

It’s not just about buying stuff. It’s about knowing that an actual person (a woman and mother) put the thought into each creation. It’s about getting something special for yourself but also about gifting something to another mom who might be going through the thick of motherhood and needs some encouraging words.

Made For Mama Shop is a community of women and moms and together we are stronger!

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

Made For Mama Shop was started in 2020 during the pandemic by the wonderful Mindy Keegan. I was a customer of hers and absolutely loved everything she made and purchased so much from her shop. She decided to close down her store in the spring of 2023 for her personal reasons.

Personally, I have always had an entrepreneurial spirit. I started and have run a baking side business out of my home as well. During late August 2023, one day I randomly thought of MFMS and wondered if Mindy ever sold the business. I reached out to her and asked. She quickly responded and said she had not sold it but was still open to it. Long story short, we talked over the next few weeks and I officially took over Made For Mama Shop in September 2023.

What sets Made For Mama Shop apart from others? I think the biggest thing is that every coffee mug, drinkware item is hand designed by me (Ashley). I spend a lot of time coming up with ideas on what I want to put on the mugs; uplifting and encouraging words (and sometimes just cute and funny). From there it is the designing of how I want the words to look, what type of mug, what color, etc. Our mugs and drinkware are not mass produced. They are unique to Made For Mama Shop and you will not find another like it anywhere else.

Like a lot of small businesses, when you contact us or send us a message on social media, I am the actual person reaching back out to you and responding. I think it is very important to get to know my customers (and people in general). I want to connect on a personal level because that is what our mission is all about.

I have many more ideas for goods that we are currently working on and I cannot wait to be able to add them to our shop! I think every mom out there will appreciate them!

Let’s talk M&A – we’d love to hear your about your experience with buying businesses.

Yes, I purchased Made For Mama Shop. I purchased the business because I felt a calling for this shop and its mission. I have three small children and work a full time job that I am not passionate about and I wanted something different. I wanted something that would allow me to be able to have a more flexible schedule, to spend more time with my kids, but also something that would allow me to do good in the world and inspire others.

I was a customer of the shop before I purchased it and loved everything about it. I thought it was a perfect business for me to take the plunge and go for it.

The acquisition process was pretty easy as the seller was so wonderful to work with. We talked on the phone and did zoom calls in the weeks before the sale went through. She was so open with everything. She gave me financials, insight to the workings of the business, everything. After we signed the purchased agreement, we had several zoom calls the first week to transition all programs, passwords, files over to me. She made herself available to me as much as I needed her for the first 3 month transition period for questions or anything else. We hit a few issues transferring some of the trademark ownership and the Meta business ownership over to me but for the most part it was pretty seamless.

Can you open up about how you funded your business?

I had a savings account that allowed me to be able to fund several thousand of capital up front. In order to do the rest, I looked into several different business loan options. Unfortunately since the business was “new” under the new entity structure and myself as the owner, I was not able to get any kind of tradition loan of line of credit. I looked into several smaller state/county funding options as well. I came across a “crowdfunding” page called Kiva. This website provides small short term business loans to those who qualify with a 0% APR to get their businesses up and running. I was able to submit the application and go through the vetting process. From there I had to go out and do private funding of my loan in order to get it to the “public” phase. The loan was open for 30 days for people from all over the world to loan money to me to reach my goal. If I didn’t reach the goal, I didn’t get any of the money. Luckily I reached the goal and was able to receive the loan which helped fund the rest of the capital I needed up front.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.madeformamashop.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/madeformamashop/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/madeformamashop
• Other: https://www.pinterest.com/madeformamashop https://www.tiktok.com/@made.for.mama.shop

Image Credits
Marie Elizabeth Photography