DUE Founders on What To Expect From the Brand That Puts Mums First

Introducing DUE, a new, and the first, brand from The Memo. Modern pregnancy, postpartum and feeding aids for the next generation of mums. Created by The Memo experts who’ve experienced nip-lash, peri-burn and the overwhelm of new motherhood first-hand, DUE is a collection of solution-driven, mum-first products that you don’t need a medical degree to understand. Here, The Memo and DUE founders Phoebe Simmonds and Kate Casey tell us why it was time for DUE.

When did you have the idea for DUE? And what was the original elevator pitch?

Kate: “With The Memo, we’ve always been on a mission to help new and expecting parents feel good, prepared and supported, and to simplify the baby shopping experience. Key to this is championing mum, her recovery, her transition in parenthood, something we’ve done by painstakingly building a curation of brands across the categories of pregnancy, postpartum and breast and bottle feeding. This is comprehensive and detailed, but without The Memo, it’s not necessarily easy. When you're out of our store, off our website and it’s just you, in a hospital room, freshly postpartum looking at a box of postpartum aids, The Memo can’t be there with you. And we want to be, holding your hand, making it easy. So, we thought it would be great to create a single brand, from T1 to T4, that makes it super straight-forward, easy and even a little bit fun.”

It’s a very cohesive, huge, 20 products. Was there any that were particularly hard to get right or you feel really strongly about?

Kate: “We were coming to this with five years’ insight of what the customer is buying, liking and the trends in the mum category, so it was always clear what I wanted and I didn’t want to compromise. There are also categories we want to drive and champion, like C-Section care. A third of all births in Australia are caesarean, and two in five of those are unplanned. Representing those mums and offering specific recovery support was really important to us. We are very proud of our Scar Strips Silicone C-Section Reusable Scar Patches and Heavy Lifter Belly Band, and we know we have more to do here as the range evolves.”

Phoebe: “They were all hard! Haha. Together, the team poured their hearts and souls, brutal and beautiful experiences of T1 to T4 into this range. The brand came very easily, we had a clear POV that we wanted to express (mum-first, taboo breaking, celebratory, problem-solving). The product process took rounds and rounds, we knew exactly what our customer deserved. The products needed to be strong enough to support anyone in the most transformational times of life, and simple enough to understand amidst the overwhelm of early parenthood. So they took time. They took many, many iterations, and we’re so proud of where we landed. If the product wasn’t clear, or it wasn’t obvious how to use it, we had to go back and make the product clearer, easier to use. Colostrum Catchy’s is a good example. Expressing colostrum can be a really fiddly process and you don’t want to waste a drop, the less steps the better. Our preferred experience after many goes is one-step collect straight from the nipple. Alternatively, mums can express into the collection cup and pour it straight into the collector (the nib is removable). This excludes the need for single-use syringes.”

Kate: “The After (Pants) Party! We put our disposable underwear through some rigorous testing with the volume of liquid they could hold, upwards of 800ml! That’s a lot of broken waters and/or lochia! While it’s unlikely you’ll need them to hold that much liquid, it’s reassuring to know that The After (Pants) Party is ready for whatever comes your way during labour and postpartum, and you can feel secure and comfortable.”

Phoebe:“We were also really specific on ingredients. We wanted to up the intensity of magnesium to 5% in our Calm Down Cream for maxo relaxo. We super charged our formula so it would work hard to improve circulation, reduce inflammation and aid cramping, while also making your skin feel smooth, soft and hydrated, but never greasy. We also pushed for our Peri Cloud Cooling Witch Hazel Perineal Foam to get to 5% Witch Hazel, making it more effective at cooling and gently cleaning the swollen, sore perineal area after birth.”

Kate:“Scent was also a big one. Two in 3 pregnant women experience scent sensitivity, so we took on board a lot of feedback when creating our Belly Glide Pregnant Body Cream and Calm Down Magnesium Body Cream. Quite frankly, we didn’t want it to be scent free, there are already other great brands who offer that, we wanted something that was subtle, yes, but for our brand, importantly, emotive. The result is a nutty, sweet and delicious scent and we hope, a divine experience for pregnant mums.”

What was your high of creating the line?

Phoebe: “The first campaign shoot was a huge high, seeing our beautiful real new-mum models feeling powerful, comfortable and confident as they stepped into DUE and championed the POV. The energy was just so beautiful. It gave us chills. But I think the true high will come when we start to see it being used, when the reviews come in, when people are posting about it on their own channels.”

OK, your friend is pregnant for the first time, what’s one thing you give her from the line?

Phoebe: “Nip Magic! Any new mum looking to establish breastfeeding needs these silver nursing cups in their hospital bag. They work preventively, so she can wear them to protect her nipples from damage (my recommended approach), or as a repairer of inflamed, chaffed or sensitive nips. It can make a huge difference to her breastfeeding experience and her postpartum recovery, a considerate gift and an important message to a new mum.”

Kate: “For me, it’s Belly Flop Pregnancy Pillow. It’s so hard to feel comfortable when your body is growing, and a pregnancy pillow is a great gift for a new mum to feel supported while sleeping on her side, bolstering her bump and helping to give her growing body the rest it craves. Or Belly Glide! That’s a beautiful gift.”

DUE is now available on The Memo online and in-stores, but what are your future plans for it?

Kate: “We’d like to make DUE more accessible to more mums. Because The Memo can't be everywhere - we're not going to be on every corner open 24/7, no matter how much we'd like that - we hope that DUE will be able to. On the pharmacy shelf at 6pm when you can’t find your nipple shields, in London when you’re 20 weeks pregnant on a work trip and your skin is so itchy! We want DUE to be a capsulated piece of The Memo that goes beyond its doors to new mothers everywhere.”

Phoebe: “The follow on from this is, of course, that conversations about pregnancy, postpartum and parenting can start to move into different spaces. Spaces of society that aren’t ‘in it’. A customer at The Memo, for example, is a parent or expecting parent or close with someone who is, they are ‘in it’, but we hope DUE will be seen by the teenage dude going to grab shaving cream at the supermarket, or the retiree picking up their prescription at their local pharmacy. And it will be seen, because our packaging isn't discreet!”