ANY mum knows all too well the struggle that comes with getting everyone out of the house on time for the school run.
And no one understands it better than Kelly Walker who found herself constantly searching for her son’s school uniform every morning.
“He kept losing his school hat and getting into trouble for it,” the Sydney mum tells Kidspot.
“Our mornings were chaotic because we’d all be set to go, and Jake would say, ‘Oh, Mum, I don’t have my hat’.
“We’d search the car and the bedrooms. It became a really annoying thing that happened a lot.
“He would also come home upset because he would have to sit on the steps at lunchtime and miss out on playing with his friends for not having it. For a sporty kid like him, it was hard. We ended up having to buy him three hats that year.”
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Kelly found she wasn’t the only parent at her children’s school struggling with the same issue.
“There were endless trips to lost property,” the 51-year-old recalls.
“When I looked in there, there were so many hats, it was insane. That’s when I thought, ‘Hang on, I think I can try to solve this problem’.”
When Kelly found there were no solutions online, she went away to brainstorm ways to attach a hat to a school bag.
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“Jake needed to take his hat on and off through the day, so I wanted something that would allow him to physically see where it was – and for parents to be able to do that too,” she explains.
“That way, if it’s not there, you can instantly see if a hat is lost. I also realised that I also left my wide-brimmed hat at home many times because it was too much hassle to carry around, so I wanted to solve that problem, too.”
For 12 months, Kelly – who was a busy stay-at-home mum of three at the time – used every spare moment she had to make her idea come to life.
“I was practising with bulldog clips and carabiners, and went to Spotlight to try out different concepts.”
After many road tests at home, Kelly discovered that magnets were the only thing that didn’t mark her son’s good quality school hat when it was kept securely attached to his bag.
When Jake, 13, and siblings, Charlie, 15, and Ella, 11, began taking the initial designs to school, Kelly soon discovered she was onto something that would change not only her family’s life but many others’ as well.
“The problem with Jake losing his hat was totally eliminated,” she says proudly.
“Our mornings were less chaotic. It made it so much easier to keep track of his hat. Jake was also incredibly grateful because he didn’t get in trouble anymore for not having his hat at lunchtime. It was great to be able to solve that for him.”
After five prototypes and a $10,000 (£5,000) investment from her own savings, Kelly launched Klipsta on April 19, 2020, all from her own home.
The magnetic rubber clips, which retail for $24.95, (£12.50) are made in Australia, water resistant and recyclable.
While online sales were initially slow, the mumpreneur remained confident that it would only be a matter of time before the product would take off, judging by the feedback she received in her community.
“At pick up, parents would notice their hats were neatly on the front of their backpacks, so word of mouth quickly spread and people were asking for them and the school asked for them to be put in the uniform shop,” she says.
“I got a note from the local daycare saying ‘thank you’, because it made it so much easier for the kids to get their hats from their bag at playtime because they didn’t have to go into their bags and take a while to find them. When me and my husband were up at midnight packing boxes, we knew it was all worth it.”
In October, 2022, Klipsta was added to the US website of Amazon, and catapulted Kelly’s sales beyond her wildest dreams.
“It just went nuts, it was insane,” she says.
Incredibly, Kelly currently sells $270,000 (£145,000) of product per month just from US Amazon alone.
In Australia, they are sold via the Klipsta website and through other local retailers.
Kelly estimates in this financial year alone, her company will turn over a whopping $4 million.
In the three years since it began, her sales are in excess of $5 million.
And that’s just the tip of the iceberg of what’s to come.
“The next financial year we expect to do $10 million (£5.5 million),” she says humbly.
“I started this as a side hustle and I was just searching for something to be passionate about, so this is incredible to have this happen.”
There’s no stopping this creative problem solver, who has more than a dozen Klipstas around her home to help store her family’s hats in cupboards (as a handy space saver) as well as on everyone’s bags.
She’s just launched SPEX, a clip for glasses, and has several more ideas bubbling away.
“My goal is to one day, turn over $30 million (£15 million) a year.”
Despite her incredible success, Kelly remains able to keep a flexible work/life balance and still operates her side of the business from her home office, while having warehouses in Melbourne and San Diego, along with six employees.
“I tell my kids I have the best job in the world because I’m doing something that I want to do,” she says with complete satisfaction.
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“I want to show them that even if you have no experience, like I did, that if you work hard, you can do anything – and one day, they can as well. That’s what I’m most proud of and I hope they’re proud of me, too.”
This story was originally published on Kidspot and has been republished here with permission
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