A Plymouth woman who once waited on tables at a Barbican restaurant is now the boss of an 8million euro baby products company favoured by Pippa Middleton and other celebrities.
Samantha Brückner worked as a waitress at the Barbican Pasta Bar for several years before founding Toddlekind, which is now selling playmats and other accessories for new mums and dads in 46 countries and has broken into the US market.
The company, which started in November 2018, has already generated 7million euros in revenue and is now looking to double the 4million euro turnover it made in 2021.
Mrs Brückner, who runs the business from Plymouth and Germany, said: “We are stocked at some of the world's leading retailers such as El Corte Ingles in Spain, Buy Buy Baby in the USA, BabyPark across the Netherlands, Westwing in Germany and we are about to enter Selfridges in the UK.
“We have many celebrity customers including Pippa Middleton and Saudi royalty to name a few. We have won awards and have also been featured in Marie Claire, The Independent, Women's Health and voted one of the top 10 baby brands for the Royal baby.”
Toddlekind is a provider of Scandi-inspired playmats and interior accessories. The mats are free from chemicals such as BPA, formaldehyde, phthalates, heavy metals and latex.
Plymouth-born Mrs Brückner has diversified the product range from playmats to incorporate play rugs, clean wean mats, organic cotton mats, storage baskets and a range of accessories for babies and toddlers.
The products are sold worldwide with retailers including Natural Baby Shower and Scandiborn with major new department and online stores to be announced soon.
Mrs Brückner, who divides her time between Hartley and Germany, said: “We have experienced huge year on year growth with turnover in the millions and expected to double in 2022. We expect to double last year's revenue to hit 8m euros this year.”
She added: “Our biggest market is the USA followed by Germany and the UK and France. Due to our success in the US market - 400% growth in 12 months - we will temporarily move to the USA to further grow the business.”
Mrs Brückner has recently launched a charity initiative with One Day, giving back to the most vulnerable children in Sierra Leone, and introduced a partnership with Tree Nation so for every product sold, a tree is planted restoring mangroves lost to deforestation and wildlife habitats in Madagascar.
It is all a long way from being a waitress for Mrs Brückner, whose father Feri came to the UK from Iran in the late 1970s where he met her mother Tania, who is half English and half Polish.
“They had three children and I am the middle child,” said Mrs Brückner. “Growing up in Plymouth I worked at the Barbican Pasta Bar as a waitress for a number of years.
“My father owned a nightclub in the 1990s as well as a takeaway restaurant and owned student properties. It was his hardworking nature that impacted me to want to do more than the norm, and I always yearned to be self-employed like him.
“I lived in Derriford growing up and went to Tavistock College and then Notre Dame for my A Levels before moving to Sheffield where I studied journalism.
“After a brief stint as an entertainment reporter for an Irish radio station in Dublin, I then moved to London where I worked in media recruitment.
“After meeting my husband on a backpacking trip to South America, I moved to Frankfurt and set up the German branch of my uncle's recruitment firm The Emerald Group, also a Plymouth business.
“Despite having generated more than 1m euros within the first 18 months, I felt unfulfilled and frustrated. I decided then that I would never work for anyone else again and founded my own consulting firm after quitting.”
Within six months of having established her consulting firm Mrs Brückner secured a contract with GM Financial to head up the recruitment of their new leasing business in Germany,
“I worked for just short of a year in this corporate environment before falling pregnant with my second child,” she said. “It was whilst on maternity leave that I had the idea for Toddlekind. We had just built our own house and whilst looking for a rug to protect her head from the daily tumbles, it occurred to me how impractical a rug would be with her constantly spitting up.
“A wipe-clean playmat seemed like the perfect solution but I couldn't find anything stylish that I would want to put in my modern new home. That set me on a journey to develop a range of playmats that are made for children, but designed for parents.
“I knew immediately that this presented a worldwide opportunity because I used Google translate to translate the word playmat in many languages and a google search showed me that there was nothing on the market like this in any countries. I vowed to myself to create a global brand and bring my products to all these countries. I didn’t have a lot of support for my idea and most friends and family were very sceptical, but I knew with 100% certainty that I had found an incredible business niche.
“Kudos to my husband who came home from work that day to be told I would never work in recruitment again, that I had already registered the brand name and come up with my first two designs whilst he was at work. He was shocked but luckily fully by my side and today is our company's CFO. He has his own accounting firm also.”
