http://www.annieandisabel.com

Marketmommies:  Tell us about your business.
Anna & Selena:  Annie & Isabel is The Stylish Alternative to a Hospital Gown! We are sisters and registered nurses. Anna works in an Emergency Department and Selena works in an adult Intensive Care Unit. Our many years of working as nurses have made it clear to us that wearing a generic hospital gown is often a patient's number one complaint. We saw an opportunity, with our business, to improve the patient experience by designing gowns that are attractive, comfortable, and, most importantly, completely cover your "backside"  and we coined our byline:  When you look good, you feel better.

Marketmommies:  How did you get started?
Anna & Selena:  In our years at the bedside, we have placed the same old dingy, stained, thin gowns on our patients over and over.  We feel embarrassed to present them with these gowns and have always said, if we were in the hospital we could NEVER wear them! We knew the history of that gown and all the hundreds of patients who had worn it and the harsh chemicals that were used to disinfect it.  

When we had our last babies, and we ourselves were the patients wearing those gowns, we made a promise to ourselves to pursue our dream company. Through lots of research, trials and networking we have made our dream company a reality!!! 

Marketmommies:  Is there a person in your life that inspired you to go for it?
Anna & Selena:  We have honored several amazing women who have inspired us to become the women that we are today. The thought of wanting to honor them and, in some way, memorialize them, really helped inspire us and give our ideas a focus. You can read about them on our website under the section “Naming of our Gowns” as we have named each of our gowns after these amazing people.

Marketmommies:  What has been the biggest learning curve?
Anna & Selena:  Neither of us had ever started a business before so the biggest learning curve was figuring out how to do it!!  We had no idea going into this venture the amount of work starting a business would entail.  We have been very thankful to have each other to figure it out and well as the ability to access so much information through the internet as that has been a huge help in figuring it all out.  If we had to pick one thing that has been our biggest learning curve it would probably be the process of setting up our internet shop, dealing with web page experts and figuring out what would be the best way to market our product.

Marketmommies:  What are the pros/cons of having your own business?
Anna & Selena:  The pros are definitely doing something that you love and seeing your dreams realized. For us, it also gives us such great opportunities to spend time with each other which had been hard to eke out in our everyday lives. We really are the best of friends and feel so blessed that we can do this together.

The cons, so far, I guess is that it does add a whole new dimension to our already full schedules. The fact, however, that we are able to do something that we really want to do, cancels out, at least for now, the extra time that this business takes.  Our spouses and all of our family have been so supportive and have been there for us when there are not enough hours in our day.

Marketmommies:  How do your find your balance between your family and your business?
Anna & Selena:  We are working on that and we think we are doing well…..All of us are involved in this business. Selena’s husband makes stops at the manufacturer in San Francisco on his way home from work. Anna’s husband just built us an “ironing table” as we iron and inspect each gown ourselves. We babysit for each other to make time for each of us to take our husbands out on a “date night”.  Our boys are enjoying their cousins more than ever as they are together more often. It is not always east to keep a balance but as we make our way in these first months we feel that we are doing a good job so far.

Marketmommies:  What advice do you have for moms with their own business, or moms who are thinking of giving it a try?
Anna & Selena:  One thing that we could say is that we have found that networking is a wonderful thing. We have found other mothers out there on blogs and those who are running their own little web shops and talking to them has been a great help for us. For any moms thinking about starting a business….if you have a product that you feel would be a success then get out there and go for it.  Taking the step to start your business is scary but there really is a lot of support out in the community and on the internet to help make businesses successful. The time has never been better to start a business!

Marketmommies:  Tell Us about your family.
Anna & Selena:  We love to watch peoples faces when we tell them we have SIX boys between us!!! We had our baby girl names picked out with every pregnancy… and then we were blessed with another sweet boy!  We spend a lot of time together…

You will usually find our boys running around in the backyard while we are brainstorming on what we need to get done for Annie & Isabel.

Instead of Anna’s four boys and Selena’s two boys we think that our boys really think of themselves as six brothers and they will have all the life long benefits of the love of a big family.

In additions to our sweet boys we also both have wonderful husbands who have been great supports throughout this endeavor!!

Marketmommies:  Anything else you would like to add?
Anna & Selena:  We would just like to again encourage others who might be wanting to start up their business to give it a try. Even if this business does not make it in the long run, we will know that we had a dream, we set our goals and we made it happen! The whole process has been so exciting for us that we will never forget this experience. One of our main goals was to brighten the lives of others and we hear stories back all the time that reinforces that dream and makes us realize that we already are a success. That feels so good  We also want to thank Marketmommies for all the resources, support, and encouragement!!