Being a new mom can be overwhelming whether it’s your first baby or your fourth. You are bombarded with products and services that claim to meet your needs better than the next one. Often the baby market concentrates on baby with little emphasis on mom. UpSpring, an innovative company that creates science backed and all natural products, takes a different approach by catering to both mom and baby with several one of a kind items such as MilkscreenⓇ, the first home test kit to detect alcohol in breast milk. CEOMOM chatted with UpSpring co-founder and CEO, Lisa Williamson, to learn more about the company’s vision and plans for future products.
Tell us more about UpSpring? What products and services does your company offer?
UpSpring provides products across several categories. Our mission has been to improve the health and wellness of moms and babies and we are expanding our product offerings to include children and fathers. We are very passionate about breastfeeding and helping moms breastfeed as long as possible. We have been able to bring several mom inventors under the UpSpring umbrella such as Julie Jumonville, inventor of MilkscreenⓇ. Julie learned that women were stopping breastfeeding during the holidays so she created MilkscreenⓇ, a home test kit to detect alcohol in breast milk. Another one of our flagship products is Milkflow™ which helps moms make more breast milk. One of the top reasons moms stop breastfeeding is because they feel they aren’t producing enough. Most products designed to increase breast milk are fenugreek based. There were no great solutions on the market to help moms take the fenugreek which has a bad taste. A better tasting product containing fenugreek was something that moms needed. Milkflow™ comes in capsule and drink mix form. It’s a delicious alternative to traditional fenugreek based products.
We also have our Mom Essentials line. Mom is very important to us and we feel that it is essential to take care of mom prenatally and postnatally. A lot of the focus tends to go to baby. We want to focus on mom. One of our mom inventors, Catherine Brooks, created C-PantyⓇ for moms who have had c-sections. It helps mom heal from the inside out and get up quicker. We also have belly wraps in our ShrinxⓇ line, as well as vitamins and supplements. Another passion of ours is to find solutions for moms that are science based. Mom can take something natural to make her feel more healthy. We are currently working on new vitamins and minerals.
Where do you see UpSpring in 5 years?
We are working on a new category that we will be launching next year. It’s a way to make baby truly healthier and will start before conception. That’s what we get the most excited about, creating new categories to improve the health of mom and baby. We look for areas for moms where there needs to be new solutions. We are expanding beyond mom and baby and into children and teens and general market products. Our morning sickness product, Morning SickLESS, is designed for moms but it also works for nausea and motion sickness. We just launched a general market product called Stomach Settle.
How do you balance managing a successful business with being a mom?
The values and mission we have at UpSpring is interrelated with my family life. The company doesn’t stop and family time begins. It’s a bit more fluid. When we test our products our families are first in line. We joke that my son Drake is a guinea pig. We care so much about every ingredient in our products that we feel 100 percent comfortable giving it to our families. We test our products with hundreds of moms before it goes to market. UpSpring is constantly being weaved in the conversations at home. Balance is not easy but because of the type of company UpSpring is and what we represent it makes it easier. If you look at the UpSpring values they are the same as our family values.
Are there other companies like UpSpring? How do you stand out from competition?
If you look across the mom and baby space, most of the companies are larger and are not mom founded. I think what allows us to stand out is our authenticity and transparency. Even if it’s something that’s not great, we want to communicate authentically to moms. Moms and babies are ingesting our products so we want them to see that we care. We truly collaborate with other moms. We have mom inventors we’ve brought into the UpSpring family. Moms have the best ideas because they live it every day. We really look for amazing inventions and amazing women who can get their products to as many women as they would like. We focus on mom. Most companies focus on babies. We really want to be mom’s advocate.
Learn more about UpSpring and Lisa Williamson at https://www.upspringbaby.com/.