The softest startup in Saudi Arabia

Friends around me were becoming parents, and kept raising the same problem: finding genuinely soft, gentle materials for babies. Bamboo baby products were taking off globally, but there was barely any such proposition in Saudi Arabia. And I wanted something else too: hands-on DTC experience, building a proposition, acquiring customers, running a web store, rather than just advising people who did.

Founder. Everything, bootstrapped: supplier selection and manufacturing in China, product specs, pricing, inventory, my own web store, marketplace listings on Amazon and Noon, retail conversations, customer acquisition.

Built the brand around one hero product, the bamboo baby towel, the clearest expression of the proposition: material, softness, quality. Launched 3 SKUs within six months, secured 6 retail partnerships across specialist baby boutiques and pharmacies, and ran the whole thing end to end.

$10K revenue at roughly 65% gross margin, online conversion improved from 1.2% to 2.8%. The proposition was validated end to end: idea to market, online and retail. In 2019, with the business having done what I built it to do, I wound it down deliberately and moved to Germany for the Fossil chapter.

Own web store · Amazon · Noon · Saudi online platforms · specialist retail