British Baby Box, which celebrates its second birthday in January, has had an incredible year.
A highlight of 2017 for us has been winning a number of awards – recognition of all our hard work and dedication.
These include the title of Great British Entrepreneur of the Year in the Innovation category, two awards in the Project Baby Magazine Awards and Gold for a campaign to support new parents at the Chartered Institute of Public Relations Pride awards.
Many of these awards acknowledged how hard we have worked to maintain a British ethos and stay at the forefront of baby safety campaigns and celebrated our partnership with a number of charities.
British Baby Box was built with the aim of giving all children an equal start in life – an ethos which began in Finland where, for 80 years, the state has been gifting all new mums with a baby box.
This is why we teamed up with Save The Children at the start of the year to provide baby boxes to babies from war-torn countries living in refugee camps, championed Safer Sleep Week, a campaign run by the Lullaby Trust, and worked with Emma’s Diary to provide advice for mums-to-be.
When the Grenfell Tower fire happened in June, we also joined the relief effort – on the recommendation of the Lullaby Trust – providing beds for a number of babies displaced by the devastating blaze.
Our charitable work is something we want to continue in 2018 and beyond and this is bolstered by our plan to bring together a community of parents from all walks of life who understand what we are trying to achieve and want to support that.
We have already introduced a new forum – Mum’s The Word – on the British Baby Box website, designed as a space to share parenting tips and advice and this is proving to be very popular.
Finally, and most significantly, we have underlined our commitment to baby safety by positioning ourselves at the forefront of a campaign for new safety standards in the UK for baby boxes.
Our business is one of the only baby box companies worldwide to meet the highest safety standards possible here in the UK and we want there to be a specific standard for baby boxes to reassure parents.
Next year we will continue to work with the government, the NHS, steering groups and health professionals to develop this.
