We recently connected with Sarah Shell and have shared our conversation below.

Sarah, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. So let’s jump to your mission – what’s the backstory behind how you developed the mission that drives your brand?

I’m an ex-fashion designer. A dentist. An inventor. A founder of a successful CPG company. But most importantly, I’m a mom. And I’m writing this because I had one simple mission: to make my home safer for my child. Once I accomplished that, I set out to make your homes safer for your children.

I left the fashion industry to do something that would improve someone’s circumstance. I didn’t want my life’s story to be about creating something attractive that people purchased and soon forgot about. I wanted to make a positive impact and one that would stick. Dentistry would allow me to do that, while making use of my science and design backgrounds. But does a degree need to follow a pre-paved path? I certainly think not.

My personal mission in changing career paths was to improve someone’s circumstance – to make a positive impact. And while practicing dentistry did that, my knowledge and skills and circumstances has taken me on a less curated path. Early in my dental career I studied a case – the first thing I knew about the case was that a child had been injured and that injury resulted in a scar that would extend from the corner of the mouth almost to the young child’s ear. It was a difficult image to look at. I learned that the child had suffered an electrical injury by sucking on the end of a plugged-in USB charger.

Years later, this image jolted back in to my mind as I ran to release a USB charger from my 10 month old’s grip as he was attempting to put it in his mouth. I knew in that moment the trauma that it could have caused.

As a neurologist, my husband had seen how injury to infants and toddlers can go on to impact their lives. As a result, our home had all the baby proofing devices. All of them. But as we learned, there was no device on the market to keep our child safe from USB chargers that are commonly left plugged in. We realized baby proofing devices were so antiquated as to not consider how modernity has impacted a child’s potential for harm in their own home. So my personal mission shifted to that simple one I wrote about: to make my home safer for my child.

And this is how my dental education and my design skills converged to lead me on this unpaved path that sometimes requires me to borrow a compass and a flashlight.

We founded Geddy’s Mom to keep children safe in modern day homes. That often means getting ourselves down on the ground to a child’s eye level and capacity for movement/development – that’s the only way to really know what hazards they may encounter. And we do this at all their stages in growth and development. With this information, we conduct our research. Our research uses various valuable resources available to learn the number and extent of injury to different age groups, as documented by governmental databases as well as individual case studies reported.

Though our mission calls in to action my breadth of education, it is not a solo mission. I have the support of my co-founder/husband whose background is a valuable resource to help tease through risks and concepts. We learn a great many things from conversations with friends and acquaintances who have lived in the world of CPG and offer their experience and guidance. Those are my compass and flashlight when the path gets a little dark and twisty.

At the end of the day, what fuels me on this journey is hearing I’ve improved someone’s circumstance and made a positive contribution to their life. And by that I mean hearing from a customer that our product made it a little easier for her to parent by keeping their environment safer for their children. A mother who found her child sucking on her charger that now has one less concern by having Watch Your Mouth locked around it.

That’s it. That’s why I did this. And there’s plenty more that we have in line to contribute to the safety of your child in your home.

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?

Geddy’s Mom is the maker of Watch Your Mouth, the original and multi-award winning child-resistant USB charger safety cover. Woman-owned and made in the USA, Geddy’s Mom is founded by two doctors who work together with engineers to make baby-proofing products for the modern day home.

Have you ever had to pivot?

yes, shared in previous slide

We’d love to hear your thoughts about selling platforms like Amazon/Etsy vs selling on your own site.

We sell on Amazon for our primary e-commerce. They are strict and protect brands who have proven authorization. We find we are less protected on other sites. Being trademarked and patented, Amazon really swoops in when other brands try to copy us.     

Contact Info:

• Website: geddysmom.com
• Instagram: instagram.com/geddysmom

Image Credits
Some (not all) are Abby Cole