MummyGoRound was founded earlier this year by working mum, Navjot Wyld. The seeds for the idea for the website were sown when Navjot was on maternity leave following the birth of her son a couple of years ago.
“I was sitting at home, loving spending time with my son, but also feeling a bit fed up with wanting to get back in shape and wondering how I was going to find the time to get to the gym. The flexibility of a personal trainer would have been perfect – but quite honestly, spending that kind of money whilst on maternity leave, and in today’s climate just felt like too much of an extravagance.”
Navjot was chatting to one of the trainers, Sarah, at a local gym a week or so later and found out that Sarah had entered a triathlon and needed a bike to train on. Navjot had a really good bike in her garage that she hadn’t used for over 5 years and so they agreed to exchange 10 personal training sessions for the bike.
“It was an absolute result for both of us and it got me thinking that there must be loads of people out there with skills and services that they could exchange for things that they need. As a Mum, I would love to recycle the things that my son no longer needs and pass them on to people that need them. Kids grow out of things so quickly and it just feels wrong to throw them away. But all the other Mums I know tend to have children of the same age so we couldn’t really exchange. I wondered how we could exchange things with a wider group of people.”
Navjot started researching and asking around to see if this was something that would appeal to other people. She was amazed at how many Mums she spoke to would not only want to recycle items that they no longer needed, but also would love to use some of the skills that they had in exchange. She actually started to put people in touch with other people.
“I started to feel like a matchmaker! A friend of mine has a daughter, Amy, who was struggling with her reading and she was worried about her getting behind at school. I put her in touch with a mother from my toddler group who was a teacher, but was taking a few years off whilst her daughter was very young. She was delighted to spend a couple of hours a week helping Amy with her reading in exchange for some clothes and toys that Amy had grown out of and were perfect for her daughter. There was also a Father I knew who was a great gardener and he did some gardening for a neighbour of mine who did some baby sitting for him in exchange. It really started to snowball from there.”
Navjot decided to use her business skills to create a website that would bring together people with skills and unwanted items and where they could get something that was relevant and of value in return. The rest (as they say) …. is history!
