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

Mel and Ali , thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. Let’s start with the story of your mission. What should we know?

Being a mother is the best and most important job in the world, but it is also hard, and scary, and sometimes you just feel alone. We realized that in order to survive this crazy ride, we had to make time for ourselves, and furthermore, NOT feel guilty about it. It can be a hard thing to do when being pulled in so many directions literally and emotionally – but let’s be real, it is imperative for our sanity!

To help provide a reminder to mothers in our direct community and beyond we created a quarterly subscription box called Need Want Wear Share. Think of it as a grown up goody bag, a treat for mamas everywhere for all of the hard work they do. We curate 4 items in each box: something you need, something you want, something to wear and something to share.

Being a mother is all encompassing and is impossible to label. We noticed other subscription boxes were for: the crunchy mom, the crafty mom, the techie mom, the urban mom, the sporty mom etc…and we didn’t fit into just one box. 𝐍𝐞𝐞𝐝 𝐖𝐚𝐧𝐭 𝐖𝐞𝐚𝐫 𝐒𝐡𝐚𝐫𝐞 is for “the every mom”, fulfilling all sides of you as a person, a women, and a mama.

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?

Mel and Ali, best friends and the founders of CbusMamatribe and Need Want Wear Share are all about finding balance in motherhood. CbusMamatribe is not your average mom blog. Realizing that there was a need, a want, a desire from moms just like us, to forget about the everyday wear and tear of motherhood we created a safe space to share other aspects of ourselves. While we love our kids, this one is all about mamas. We explore fun things Columbus has to offer. From workouts to restaurants, stores, cooking, hikes, etc…Basically, we hold each other accountable to make sure and not lose ourselves in motherhood. Our mission is to help all mamas try and find that ever-elusive balance of motherhood. We host events around town to gather women together. We do all the planning and legwork – all they have to do is carve out the time for themselves on their calendar and show up.

When the pandemic hit and we were unable to host our monthly events in person, we were still looking for a way to carry out our mission. That is when Need Want Wear Share was born. A quarterly subscription box made for moms by moms. We have curated four items in each box, (something you need, something you want, something to wear, and something to share), that you won’t believe you could’ve ever lived without. We hope the birth of our second child, Need Want Wear Share continues to help moms prioritize themselves. Because of our love for Columbus and local small businesses, at least one item per box will be locally sourced from our hometown. In addition to supporting moms on their motherhood journey, we also find great joy in working with other fellow small business owners. Our hope is that when a customer receives a product in our box and they fall in love with it, they will then go back and shop directly from that business. So when you order a box from Need Want Wear Share, you are not only supporting our business, but four other brands as well.

How’d you meet your business partner?

Often times people think we are related or even sisters! While we do consider ourselves curly hair soul sisters, we are in fact not related and met because of our kids. Our sons attended the same preschool and quickly became fast friends. After a few play dates we figured out that our paths were destined to cross, began spending time together even without the kiddos and built a friendship like no other. Not sure where we would be without each other, true soul mates in every sense of the word. We’ve grown together in so many ways – as moms, friends, wives and now business partners.

We credit a moment in our friendship that we have dubbed the “calendar invite” (which you can read about on our CbusMamatribe blog) as the start of our journey and mission. It’s when we discovered other moms just like us might benefit from following our story and are so very thankful for a space to be our authentic selves. We don’t pretend to know it all, we keep it real, raw and share the good, the bad, the ugly and the happy. People always ask us if we were worried to become partners and how it might affect our friendship, but in our instance it has only offered growth to our relationship. Sure we have a contract and all that jazz, but when Ali said “I trust you with my life”, we both agreed that it was meant to be.

Any insights you can share with us about how you built up your social media presence?

Running a business and navigating social media is a whole animal in itself. Most small business owners would likely agree that it is a constant battle and some days you win and some days you lose. It certainly is a necessity in today’s market to have a strong social media presence. We are by no means masters of this craft but do feel we have built a community (or Mamatribe in our case) that trusts us. When we first started we made a pledge to create content and post every single day on our blog page. We felt it was important in growing our following to show up every day. It can feel daunting at times, but we use this as a means to help market our business of course but also self expression – and that can be very therapeutic. Our best advice would be to stay authentic on your social media journey. There’s a lot of “noise” when scrolling on Instagram or Facebook but we like to think that our authenticity and realness keep our community engaged and coming back for more. Do we still have content that flops? Absolutely! But stay the course and remain dedicated to building your brand and a following that trusts you, believes in you and hopefully that will in turn bring you some sales.   

Contact Info:

• Website: https://needwantwearshare.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/need.want.wear.share/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/NeedWantWearShare
• Other: https://cbusmamatribe.com/ https://www.facebook.com/Cbus.mamatribe https://www.tiktok.com/@need.want.wear.share

Image Credits
Photography credit to: Project Joy Photography, Coopervue Photography, Alec Yoder Photography