Navigating social media has been quite the learning experience! We manage it all ourselves and it is very time consuming but we see a lot of growth when we are consistently engaging on social platforms. We use Later to help with scheduling automatic posts and finding the best times to post. The hardest part of social media is keeping up with the trends and having enough quality content to post. We love engaging with our followers though!

I was a public educator for over 15 years and I learned so much about how children grow, learn and interact with others. I saw a rapid rise in the diagnosis of children with learning disabilities, such as ADHD, Autism and, even more recently, anxiety. I knew that I needed to do something to help children growing up in a time when devices are everywhere we look. After the stress of finding and organizing “busy” activities to keep my toddler entertained while on the go, I realized I could use my research to make similar activities easily accessible to other children and parents. My business partner (and former teaching partner) was in the same boat as me with her 3 children, so we put our heads together to create a product that all families could benefit from!

Pre-packed and always ready to go, our Busy Bags include a themed activity set with 5-7 engaging items in a crystal clear vinyl bag. Sold individually or as a monthly subscription, each set includes a carefully curated range of activities designed to stimulate children across multiple areas of discipline. Available for ages 1-2, 3-6, or 7-10, each themed bag is based on early childhood development. These areas include fine motor skills, cognitive learning, sensory engagement, STEAM education, and literacy. Our bags are great for eating out at restaurants, waiting at the doctor’s office, homeschooling, taking on an airplane or road trip, or taking to a caregiver’s house. They also make great gifts!

Our initial plan was to sell solely on Etsy, but we quickly learned that we wanted a direct website to our products for customers to learn more about us and our company. Etsy is great for listing products but doesn’t have much in terms of customization. The seller fees on Etsy are also significantly higher than on our Wix website. My business partner Amy built our website herself without any previous site building experience! It’s relatively easily to use but is very time consuming upfront. Wix doesn’t have the same capabilities as some other platforms like Shopify but they are constantly growing and increasing their capabilities. We later added an Etsy shop, Cratejoy profile, and Facebook/Instagram site. It’s beneficial to be in front of so many different eyes on all of the platforms, but it’s a challenge to keep them all up to date in terms of inventory. The listings on each platform do not “speak” to each other so we have to manually update them ourselves.