We recently connected with Anita Rajendra and have shared our conversation below.

Anita, appreciate you joining us today. Let’s start with the story of your mission. What should we know?

I’m a mom of three and even though they were each twenty one months apart, I could not re-use most of my maternity clothes. My body had changed, seasons were different and frankly the material had worn out. Besides, when I was pregnant with my 2nd and 3rd, I did not feel like shopping with toddlers in tow! Plus, let’s be honest, who wants to buy a new wardrobe for a short time period? I know I didn’t! But, I still wanted to look and feel good about my changing body. I was frustrated with the lack of options and the high price tags. It wasn’t until I noticed

Anita, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

My background is in the corporate world but I always wanted to start a business. I would always say “one day….” and eventually I came to the decision that I had to either stop saying that or take action. I decided to take action. I gave myself 6 months to “figure things out” such as what the business would be! Yes; that’s correct. I didn’t know what I wanted to do but the self imposed deadline helped me focus on brainstorming and researching potential ideas. I eventually decided to start a business that rented maternity clothes. I had 3 children myself and understood that maternity clothes can be expensive (particularly quality clothes) yet your body is changing and as a professional, I had to presentable. Also, even though I had 3 children, there weren’t a lot of clothes that I could reuse because my children were born in different seasons and honestly my body had changed with each pregnancy so clothes fit differently.

I launched La Belle Bump as a service to help expectant moms celebrate pregnancy in style. We do this by renting maternity clothes so that she can have a “rotating closet” with unlimited exchanges; she always has something different to wear while saving money. We soon expanded to include nursing wear. Our most popular product is the Everyday Box. A customer can select 3 or 5 Items and a box is curated for them based on their style profile. But we also have Special Occasion rentals and also sell a curated collection plus preloved clothes.

I am most proud of the customer relationships we build. Customer service was and is a very important element for me. We want to create a personal and custom experience and one thing we do that customers love is write individual notes with every outgoing package.

How’d you build such a strong reputation within your market?

Being authentic and staying focused on the mission of helping women feel and look confident & beautiful during pregnancy and as a new mom. It’s always been important to us to focus on “her” and help her be able to celebrate her pregnancy. We do this by ensuring that we listen, read all comments from customers and respond. In every package that goes out, we include a handwritten note that has helped build a relationship with customers. Our attention to detail is what puts us apart.

other women as frustrated as me that I decided to do something to change that and that’s how La Belle Bump was started.

I want to help women look and feel confident and beautiful during this special and amazing time in a woman’s life.

We’d really appreciate if you could talk to us about how you figured out the manufacturing process.

We did try our hand at manufacturing with the patent pending Mina & Vine scarf. It was designed to have the functionality of a nursing scarf but stylish so it can be worn at any time – even when not nursing. I had no experience in manufacturing. I partnered in someone who does have experience in textiles and design but she had never manufactured a product either. So there was a learning curve for bother of us. We talked to a lot of people, did a lot of research to find a manufacturer. Honestly, that was not the easiest partnership and we ended up moving to another manufacturer for our next run. We learned to do lots of research, talk to other customers, get samples and ensure timelines are agreed upon and a dedicated PM is involved before moving to an agreement with a manufacturer.

Contact Info:

• Website: LaBelleBump.com
• Instagram: LaBelleBump
• Facebook: LaBelleBump
• Linkedin: LaBelleBump
• Twitter: LaBelleBump
• Youtube: LaBelleBump