Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Becky Rapinchuk. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Becky , looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. How did you come up with the idea for your business?

Back in 2009, I wanted to start a blog (on Blogger) about how I cleaned my house quickly with kids. I had come up with a cleaning routine that I had been using for years and thought other moms might find it helpful. I started writing a blog, sharing tips, my cleaning routine, and I loved it! It was fun, people were reading what I wrote and having success with the routine. I kept writing and sharing and decided to open an Etsy shop in 2010. I was the first shop to sell printable ‘homekeeping’ documents/pdfs on Etsy.

I wasn’t sure it would work but I realized that this little idea was unique and different. Every new product sold like crazy (this was super motivating) and no one cared that it wasn’t an ‘actual’ product. I was emailing pdfs to customers as they ordered them (no automatic downloads back then) and traffic on my site was taking off and so was my Etsy shop.

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.

I started as an art teacher and would make extra money after teaching by cleaning my colleagues’ homes. I loved cleaning houses and developed a method to make it quick and easy and added that method to how I cleaned my own home and then subsequently developed the Clean Mama Routine.

As the blog took off, so did the Clean Mama Routine. It expanded into 4 books, a top lifestyle website, and a shop. The shop still includes the printable homekeeping documents and paper goods and it also includes consumable goods like laundry detergent, dish and hand soap, and Oxygen Whitener. There’s more to come with an exclusive licensing deal with pOpshelf stores – a dream come true!

Any stories or insights that might help us understand how you’ve built such a strong reputation?

When I started Clean Mama, the internet felt fresh and like anything could happen – there was a lot of sharing and networking naturally happening – I believe this really solidified my expertise. When my first and second books came out they helped to expand the brand and me as a cleaning expert.

Have you ever had to pivot?

In 2014 I started to see a saturation of printable products on Etsy and Etsy changed how your shop appeared – they displayed competitors in your store search. My sales started to dip a bit and I decided to open my shop off Etsy with printables and started a membership – Homekeeping Society. The next year I added Shopify with actual products that I shipped from my home. This shift and pivot of what I was selling and where/how I was selling was crucial to my success moving forward. In the years that have followed I’ve changed everything from shipping from warehouses, to product offerings, using a variety of vendors, importing and exporting and more, but that one leap to go on my own platform and purchase the domain really solidified what Clean Mama is all about!

Contact Info:

• Website: https://cleanmama.com
• Instagram: http://instagram.com/cleanmama
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/cleanmama
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/becky-rapinchuk-187594209/
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@clean_mama
• Other: https://cleanmama.com/about/
  https://shop.cleanmama.com