side Retail. Over the last five years, The Memo has built its expertise in the pre- and postpartum space. “Every day we get to engage with our customers and the parenting community and we get instant feedback of what new and expecting parents want,” shared Simmonds. “The brand has been in development for the last 18 months but it’s always been a cornerstone of what we wanted to do as a business,” she continued. Mothers do know best   Not only do the two co-founders have the retail experience to guide the development of their new product range, but they also have their lived experience as mothers. “We know what it’s like to have experienced ‘niplash’, ‘peri burn’, ‘jelly belly’, as well as postnatal depletion and prolapse – all of the realities that come with giving birth,” said Simmonds. “So we poured all of that experience, all the brutal and the beautiful parts, into this range,” she added.  Casey recalled that before she had her first baby she was almost only concerned with the birth and had few conversations that prepared her for the realities of postpartum. “And then all of a sudden, oh, how do I breastfeed? How do I recover? Am I allowed to go walking? What’s abdominal separation? Why is my hair falling out? Why do I feel awful? Why am I crying on day four in the shower like I’ve never cried before?” she shared. “But now we’re able to facilitate those conversations. It’s not going to be so shocking and scary and isolating, which is exactly how I felt.”  According to The Memo’s research, 92 per cent of women have reported that they felt underprepared for the postpartum recovery period, something The Memo and Due are trying to change with honest conversations and efficacious product recommendations. “This has been a mission of ours from creating this business, because the parent is the customer, not the baby. We joke that the baby doesn’t have a credit card,” shared Casey. “We really started The Memo for the mum, so it was only right that when we were creating our first line of products, it would really focus on her and put her first,” added Simmonds. It’s this shared vision by Simmonds and Casey for a retail and brand experience that spoke directly to mums that guided their product development and assortment. A new mothers group  The Memo wants to bring new mothers into its community where honest conversations are the norm and Due is the continuation of that story. “We understand where the market is and the kind of products that new and expecting parents expect in their toolkit,” explained Simmonds. “There were things in terms of the base essentials that we knew needed to be part of the Due lineup so we could represent that experience – and then we had a lot of fun, particularly around our pregnancy care,” she added. Due has launched with three categories: pregnancy, postpartum and feeding. In true The Memo style they are colour-coded and mirror the signature characteristics of The Memo: the branding is bold, the copy is witty and the products are considered. For example, Due’s disposable postpartum underwear is called ‘The After (Pants) Party’, its soothing nipple balm is called the ‘Nip Stick’ and its cooling witch hazel perineal foam is called the ‘Peri Cloud’. “The other element of it is that Due has been created to be a global brand, and we think that there’s an opportunity for it to be taken overseas,” noted Simmonds. A product line is the most efficient way for The Memo to scale its community, conversation and ultimately business. “By making Due more accessible, not just in price point, we think we can make it accessible to more women through distribution,” Simmonds elaborated. “The challenge with The Memo is that we only have four stores at the moment, and while we have a booming online business, we still think we’ve got a lot of opportunity with our brand awareness to be able to reach more people, which is where distribution comes in,” she elaborated. Simmonds and Casey created Due so more expecting and new mums get the memo about how to navigate pre and postpartum life. For the time being it will be stocked exclusively at The Memo in-store and location. “We’re going to start to build this brand through conversations by normalising what it means to give birth, by talking about the realities of pregnancy and postpartum and feeding and what happens to women’s bodies,” concluded Simmonds.  “We hope that we will play a part in creating a category that makes a big impact on society beyond just the product”.