What is the 30 Day Challenge for Babywearing Businesses?
The beginning of the calendar year is often a time for babywearing businesses and other businesses to look ahead. We want to make it easy for you to set up for a successful 2024, so we’ve created this challenge that focuses on 6 key areas:
- brand identity
- regulations and standards
- logistics and operations
- growth and planning
- social marketing
- community
Each day, we’ll post the day’s challenge on both our Facebook and our Instagram pages, and there will be links to helpful information added to this blog post where it’s relevant.
You can certainly participate privately, but we would love it if babywearing businesses of all kinds — consultants, educators, manufacturers, resellers — participate within social media as well!
You can participate with us by either commenting on the day’s post, or by posting on your Instagram page and using the hashtags #bwbizchallenge #bcia.
Jump to a particular day:
Week 1: Day 1 | Day 2 | Day 3 | Day 4 | Day 5
Day 1: Write or review the “elevator pitch” for your business
Day 1: Write / review the “elevator pitch” for your business. This is a one to two sentence summary to describe your service or product to a potential customer or client. Share it in the comments below, or post on IG using hasthtags #bwbizchallenge #bcia
Here’s an article from MailChimp with tips to create an elevator pitch — there are lots of resources available if this one doesn’t resonate with you.
Day 2: Describe your “customer avatar” or “customer persona”
Describing your customer persona means going beyond the basics of “ideal customer.” This describes a SINGLE (usually imaginary) INDIVIDUAL who might be an optimal customer, to whom you direct your messaging.
Here are two resources with great tips, graphics, and examples that will help you create your customer avatar for your babywearing businesses.
The first is from Flexxable: https://flexxable.com/blog-how-to-create-your-ideal-customer-avatars-and-empathy-maps/
The second is from TheHoth: https://www.thehoth.com/blog/customer-avatar/
If these resources don’t resonate you, a quick web search will yield many more articles.
You can participate with us by either commenting on the day’s post, or by posting on your Instagram page and using the hashtags #bwbizchallenge #bcia.
Share it in the comments below, or post with hasthtag #bwbizchallenge #bcia
Day 3: Logo and brand fonts
Day 3 of our babywearing business challenge!
Lay out your logo (in all colors and sizes) and your brand fonts. Choosing fonts for your brand that you use every time will create consistency and allow your customers to recognize you — and it will also be one less decision you have to make on a day-to-day basis.
For your logo — will you use it in white against a colored background? Can it be used in different colors? Horizontally? Do you want to always put it in a specific place, or in a specific layout for different purposes? Lay them all out and define them, if necessary.
What about fonts? Often, small businesses will make graphics and choose a different font each time. Choosing (no more than 3) brand fonts means templates and layouts are easy.
Only want one font? Totally ok! There’s no reason you need more than one!
Commonly, brands will choose a combination of fonts OR font sizes, font weights, capitalization combinations, etc., and assign them to:
- Headings
- Body text
- (Optional fancy or handwriting font)
- Testimonial layout
- Button layout and fonts
Here are the BCIA fonts and logos laid out as an example of this might look for other babywearing businesses.
Day 4: Trademarks
You may wish to trademark your business name, logo, tagline, or other business information.
For instance, the Baby Carrier Industry Alliance has trademarked our logo as well as the phrase “Visible and Kissable(r),” limiting the use of both. (To learn more about BCIA trademarks, visit this page.)
If you have questions about trademark infringement or dealing with counterfeit carriers, you can read about that here.
- In Australia: https://search.ipaustralia.gov.au/trademarks/search/quick
- In Europe: https://www.euipo.europa.eu/en/trade-marks
- In the US: https://www.uspto.gov/trademarks/
Day 5: Brand colors
Do you have specific colors that represent your brand? A clear color palette?
Do you know what the hex codes are for your palette? Hex codes are the numeric codes you’ll use for web colors when designing your website, designing graphics in a program like Canva, or otherwise.
There are countless resources to help you design a color palette and to recognize what your HEX numbers are for your colors. There are also endless free palette generators that will help you generate a color scheme that suits your brand.
As a bonus, you can also convert those HEX codes to RGB, CMYK, and Pantone colors.
An easy starter resources is this blog post at Canva.com, but you may wish to use a search engine to find a more nuanced resource, or one better suited to you.
