Life didn’t slow down for Elaine Tan Comeau when she signed a Dragons’ Den deal in 2011.
Comeau – a former Burnaby elementary school teacher, mother of three and Coquitlam resident – is the creator of Easy Daysies. Her product is a magnetic daily schedule that helps parents organize their child’s day by listing the to-dos – from getting dressed and brushing teeth to cleaning up and having playtime.
Easy Daysies has been recommended by name by child psychologists, occupational therapists and educators. (The starter kit currently retails for $19.99.) Comeau recently launched the adult version and hopes to make “easier days” for grown-ups, too.
What started as a project on her kitchen counter has grown into a global business, with sales coming from as far as Australia, Ireland and France.
Comeau also has a podcast and has become the owner of the Vancouver chapter of Mompreneurs, a national organization that supports women in business.
The NOW caught up with Comeau to see how things are going and what future plans she has for Easy Daysies.
She also has some advice for mompreneurs in the making.
How did the idea for Easy Daysies come about?
It was while I was pregnant. I was still teaching. My first product I ever launched in 2008. That was literally stuff I made on my kitchen table.
I had so many parents, when I was teaching, ask me to make a visual schedule to help their kids at home, to get out the door faster in the morning.
Studies will show that children as young as preschool age benefit from following a visual schedule because they are just less anxious. It was just a natural thing to make.
I realized I’d been making these visual schedules for many years, for free, and I just loved doing it. I thought, maybe there’s a product here. ... I knew that I needed $1,400 to make my first batch of product. I saved up by doing extra tutoring and selling crafts. I launched my first product two days after (my daughter) was born.
What happened after that?
Somehow it became the number 1 back-to-school must-have in Parents magazine, and then stores started to call. It just kind of went from there. I was at a trade show and a retailer said, “Can you make me 8,000 units?’”
I didn’t want to say no, but I knew that I made almost 2,500 in the previous year, so it was going to take me a while. She said, “Honey, you need to get off your kitchen table and go on Dragons’ Den.” Now Dragons’ Den is filmed out of Toronto, and of course we live here. We were home and my husband was on the computer, and he turned and looked at me and said, “Elaine, Dragons’ Den is here on Saturday.” I’m like “What!” It was a now-or-never moment.
How did the pitch go?
I remember just being so scared. I had to be brave for my kids. My youngest threw up when we got there because we all had bronchitis. These are things you never see (laughs).
We were told we had between five to 45 minutes in front of the dragons, depending on their mood and how you do. We were in front of them for 48 minutes.
We did incite a bidding war between all five dragons and then we chose two of them to be our partners (Jim Treliving and Kevin O’Leary), and we were told that not every deal you see happen on air actually does happen.
Were you surprised that a bidding war ensued?
Yes, absolutely. I was not expecting that at all.
What were you asking for?
$70,000 for 35 per cent (of the company). (The deal) was better than what we (asked for).
What happened after the deal? Did things get crazy?
It did get crazy. I remember CBC telling us to monitor our website traffic. At one point, we had 12 new visitors per second. At that point, we also became the number 1 small-package shipper in Maple Ridge. Canada Post came in and set up an office for us.
Our setup is different now because we’ve transitioned to having a distribution relationship as well as a licensing partner, so I’m not shipping as much anymore.
At one point, our little house looked like Costco. We had like 11 4x4 pallets with three small kids.
It’s definitely a huge learning curve because I went from being a mom and a school teacher to being a distributor, a manufacturer, a marketing person, a shipper, and it’s a lot of work.
People used to joke with me when we finished Dragons’ Den, they were saying, “Well, you’re not going to bed at 3 a.m. anymore.” I was saying, “I’m not, but I’m going to bed at 4 and 5 a.m.”
What else has happened since Dragons’ Den?
I not only have one small business now, I have three (laughs). We are expanding our line (Easy Daysies) because we’ve had so many families write to us, sharing with us that they want Easy Daysies not only for kids, but for adults with early memory loss issues like dementia and Alzheimer’s.
There are young, adult children with special needs like autism and brain injury from accident.
It took me three years and several focus groups to develop our adult version that’s coming out at the end of this month.
It’s just a huge honour and a blessing to make something that occupational therapists, speech language pathologists and child psychologists are recommending by name.
You’re also the owner of the Vancouver chapter of Mompreneurs. Why did you decide to take that on?
I had won the title of Canadian Mompreneur of the Year in 2014. Mompreneurs Canada is a national organization that supports and promotes (female) entrepreneurs across Canada.
When I won, it was a huge honour, and I became their ambassador. They had chapters across the country, but none in British Columbia, so for the last few years, they had been nudging me to start that.
I had a lot going on already, but it seemed like a really natural fit. It allowed me to meet face-to-face with these awesome mompreneurs once a month. And for each other to realize, nobody here is alone. It is a very lonely feeling when you’re a mompreneur. ... Two out of the next three small businesses in Canada will be started by women, and two thirds of them will be moms. Often, these are women who don’t have a background in business.
What’s been the most challenging thing so far as a mompreneur?
My own self-doubt. I think I have to realize, you know, I could do this, and to take one step at a time.
What are you most proud of?
I’m really honoured that there’s something that I made off our kitchen table that is helping people, helping families around the world have easier days in their lives. It blows me away, and I’m always so humbled, to get an email from the mom with three children with autism under the age of seven, sharing she doesn’t have to talk, talk, talk all day long, or a foster parent, when they had high anxiety, that in their household, their kids feel calm now because they feel safe they can predict what’s happening next.
Any advice for a mompreneur in the making?
The number 1 thing is if you have a product or a service you want to provide, the first question you want to ask is, what problem are you solving? It can’t just be cute because you like it. You can’t be your own customer only, so you want to make sure it’s providing a solution to an existing problem. Number 2 is you want to make sure it’s scalable, so that means, is there going to be growth? Is it a fad that’s just going to die and not be a business? It (needs) to be scalable that you can one day grow it and step away from it.
