We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Dominique Olowolafe a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Alright, Dominique thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. We’d love to have you retell us the story behind how you came up with the idea for your business, I think our audience would really enjoy hearing the backstory.

I’m a former pro athlete turned costume designer/supervisor for TV & Film productions. As a seasoned traveler, I knew I wanted to continue exploring the world even after I had kids. What I didn’t anticipate was the overall lack of support for families on the go.

I ran out of diapers at LAX in 2017, on my daughter’s very first flight. It was traumatic. I couldn’t understand how I was flying out of the 4th busiest airport in the world, where I could buy Chanel or Hermes but there were no basic hygienic essentials readily available for tiny humans. I was deeply offended. It was the catalyst to me obsessing over all pain points related to family travel.

The travel and hospitality industry has done a better job of accommodating pets than small children. I created Lightly in order to propel our culture forward. Access to diapers and wipes is a basic human right and necessity. Parents appreciate thoughtful amenities, and surely deserve the support.

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?

Lightly is an elevated travel brand that supplies premium baby care products to full service hotels and other hospitality centric organizations. We are acutely aware of the stress involved for parents traveling with toddlers and infants.

We believe every guest deserves the best. We are acutely aware of the stress involved for parents traveling with toddlers and infants. Lightly exists as the conduit to a more inclusive culture that goes above and beyond in supporting families on the go. We believe that no matter where you are or where you go, humans need access to basic sanitary products–tiny humans included. Parents should no longer have to compromise on quality while away from home. Through holistic partnerships with travel-based enterprise businesses that have failed to properly accommodate tiny humans, we aim to make baby care products freely accessible in all hotels.

We currently offer four tiers of nursery kits to our B2B travel partners that include diapers, wipes, bath essentials, and more. Our kits also include pre-paid shipping labels that allow parents or hospitality staff to donate any leftover products to our non-profit partner Baby2Baby. Circular commerce is core to our ethos and radical generosity reduces waste.

I’m most proud of our pilot partners who trusted us to deliver premium products and help us nudge the industry forward. I’m also proud of all the donations that have been made to Baby2Baby and am over joyed that they’re going to families in need rather than a landfill.

Have you ever had to pivot?

The first iteration of Lightly started with automated retail machines in airports serving at least a million passengers a year or more. While the timing of our launch was not ideal, due to the global pandemic, we still learned that we weren’t able to maximize our impact nor revenue through that model of the business. We had to let go of a model and solution, that was costly to operate, and keep our ear to the ground in order to find traction. Luxury hospitality was where the spaghetti finally stuck to the wall.

How did you put together the initial capital you needed to start your business?

I raised my very first $100k from my real family and friends. At the time, I had just completed an incubator program called Tacklebox, and just had a wire frame of an idea at that point. But I was confident in my vision and that coupled with my go-getter reputation was enough to convince my nearest and dearest to invest in me and the business.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://lightly.travel
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lightly.travel/
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/lightlytravel