Business partners Morgan Mixon and Rima Suppan, right, conceived the Peachies concept in 2021.
Morgan Mixon and Rima Suppan first concocted the idea of creating a “category-creating, premium nappy product” on the Victoria underground line. The co-founders of Peachies now have tunnel vision in disrupting the “traditionally boring” nappy industry.
The entrepreneurs met while studying at Imperial College Business School and launched their babycare brand in 2023. Less than two years later and the UK-based start-up has 10,000 customers, with a first-of-its-kind nappy concierge service for time-poor parents set to further bolster sales.
“Nappies have traditionally been a heavily commoditised product and it’s been a race to the bottom in terms of quality and price,” says Mixon.
“If you invest in high quality material and design and wrap that in a world-class service model, you can create something different. We wanted to inject some energy into it.”
Investors have also seen the entrepreneurs’ vision after securing £1.3m in funding for Peachies, with the founders claiming revolutionary nappy softness, longer nights and an absorbent core which holds up to 70% more liquid than other leading brands.
“We could unlock new benefits for parents,” adds Mixon. “Protecting child skin from nappy rash, less cream and fewer changes in a day.”
Peachies founders say CO2 savings are equivalent to the weight of 17 elephants per 1,000 babies.
The duo, both from family business backgrounds, had gone to Imperial with different future ambitions; Vienna-born Suppan looking to go back to her consultancy career and Mixon, who hails from Atlanta, Georgia, as a product manager.
Having applied for the entrepreneurship and innovation club at the business school, they were selected as president and vice president before COVID presented an opportunity.
“We had a symbiotic working relationship, realising that should we start something at some part in our lives we would do it together,” adds Suppan, a recent Forbes 30 under 30 in Austria.
So, why nappies? “It’s an unsexy product, it’s been unloved and that’s where we saw the opportunity,” she says, adding that by supporting women in their early parenting stages, the female co-founders felt among its core audience.
“We could see post-COVID that this could be a subscription model that could also stick,” says Mixon, who has lived in the UK for over a decade. “It’s one subscription model that truly makes sense in this day and age.”
The idea had been formed during London tube journeys as Mixon began to number crunch how many nappies her sister, with three children, changed per day.
“We dug into it by Google searching,” she adds. “We began from a business school mindset and an opportunity to be risky and be vulnerable in the entrepreneurial journey.”
The Peachies’ concept started in September 2021, despite Suppan being offered multiple tech offers. They then launched when Mixon was seven months pregnant with her first child.
Morgan Mixon, right, was seven months pregnant when Peachies launched.
“It was beneficial that we weren’t parents at the start of the business,” says Suppan. “We looked at it from a different perspective, thought laterally across industries while the nappy industry for years has been mostly male dominated.
“We looked outside the box, the engineering and how the product is manufactured. It gave us the initial boost and now one of us is a parent who can test the product every day.”
Mixon and Suppan also saw a trend of challenger brands in the market who were, they say, doubling down “on only eco friendliness as their USP” while they asked themselves why brands such as Pampers were still ruling the roost.
“Both of us have probably said that you have to develop a thick skin fast as co-founders,” smiles Suppan. “It’s like parenting and two of us makes it easier. It takes a village to raise kids and the same to make a business that works,” adds Mixon.
According to the company, Peachies nappies save up to 93 tonnes of CO₂ equivalent emissions per 1,000 babies, while they are also the first nappy company in the UK to be rated five stars across all categories by Mother&Baby.
“If we are having a down day, reading the reviews restores our faith and that we are doing something in a space we never thought we would end up in,” adds Mixon. “Neither of us thought we would be self-made nappy engineers.
“That is the beauty of consumer products. You have the opportunity to positively impact the lives of tired, over-stimulated [parents] but who are also going through a very beautiful journey in their lives.”
Behind the brand: Peachies co-founders on…
Nappy subscription model
Product quality alone enables us to make a space for the subscription to work. If it was just a subscription we wouldn’t have a strong enough concept. It takes the product, brand and world-class service around it to make a winning combination.
Overcoming nappy rash
You have to look at it from a holistic view; how to take away liquid fast and how to store it. It’s a double combination of things to counter that defence, not only to think about materials but about the design so that liquid can move effectively and stored for longer periods of time. So that if it has been worn for 12 hours you're not getting leaks or irritation.
One parent wrote to tell us about how she was struggling with rash for her baby and how the day she switched to Peachies it disappeared. We thought it was a complaint as the email was so long!
Scaling a business
How can we bring AI into the business and not only create the best nappy in the world but also shape the service element? It’s how we can change a whole category that has been dependent on bricks and mortar with no service and become the nappy service of the future.
