How it all began...

How did it all begin?! I can remember the specifics, but in the haze of newborn sleep deprivation and the grey foggy cloud of PND, there were major efforts to keep life as normal as possible and to get out of the house at least once a week. Visiting friends with similar aged children was the obvious thing to do as we were all on 'maternity leave' of some description or other.

One of these friends was Lisa, a girl I had met through my last 'paid job' who worked for a telecommunications company. She was terrific at helping me organise the telephone systems during the relocation of our office and 3 other businesses. We sort of hit it off quite well and I learned (before a lot of other people) that she was pregnant. I was very excited for her as we were going through that trial as well but hadn't been so lucky at the time.

Lisa and I met, became pretty good friends and kept in touch after she had finished work in the later stages of her pregnancy. She was one of the first I told too that we were finally expecting! I met and played with Isabella a few times before we were blessed with our daughter 13 weeks after Lisa gave birth.

Isabella aged 6.5 months, Amelia aged 3.5 months

Once we were in the swing of what resembled a routine, each week or fortnight we would take it in turns to visit each other. With a 45 minute drive between our houses it did require some planning but we were pretty good at staying in touch and starting the girls friendship.

During one visit we both expressed a bit of boredom at not having 'an interest' and the idea of having a baby shop or similar was briefly discussed. with the distance between our houses the logistics of a physical location was going to prove to be a challenge. Lisa had a side business of web design and so the seed of an online store was planted. Discussing it with respective husbands we decided online was going to be the way to go so we both added $2000 to the kitty and set about going into business as a partnership.

We registered the business and the name, Lisa looked after all the technical stuff, set up the shopping cart, the hosting and the merchant facility, together we found some suppliers to start with and setting up a spare 6'x3' cupboard in our rumpus room, we put the stock away as it arrived. I would handle the deliveries and packing and sending the orders, Lisa would look after the money and the techy stuff.

www.bellesfamilles.com.au was born.

That was in April 2006...