In Boulder, Colorado, Boba—short for “Boulder baby”—produces and sells infant companies and wraps. Founders Robert and Elizabeth Antunovic launched Boba with $15,000 and then traveled the world with their own families. Today, Boba’s sales top $10 million, and the couple oversees 25 personnel from their home in Ljubljana, Slovenia. –As told to Una Morera
Robert: Elizabeth is in Slovakia teaching English. I changed into a low-price range ride through Europe. We saw each other differently, fell in love, and now, here we are–5 youngsters and 20 years later.
Elizabeth: We have been living in Boulder since I had my second child. The baby slings I used went over just one shoulder—they hurt my shoulder again. I went to the fabric shop, which offered $100 of fabric, and reduced it to three wraps. Wherever we went, people stopped me. One of us said, “OK. If one more man or woman comes up and asks us about this wrap, we’ve got to begin something.” So, five minutes later …
Robert: We had $15,000. We positioned an element in the direction of inventory and closer to advertising. We calculated how long we ought to live on at rest–much less than $five 000. We decided to tour the arena because we may want to cut our finances down to a minimum, so we started with an unbelievably cheap flight to Ireland. Elizabeth: Where our first picture shoot turned into–on the cliffs.
Robert: Then we made our way to Slovenia, where my family is.
Elizabeth: We stayed for three months.
Robert: The first 1,000 wraps are valued at around $6,000. After we offered the first, we said, “OK! This is real. Let’s get going.” Isabela changed into 4. Nikolai became 1. Our circumstance changed into that anywhere we landed, within 24 hours, we had to locate the internet to get entry to answer customers. In 2007, this changed into an undertaking. I discovered a reasonably-priced flight to Egypt, and we flew into Sharm El-Sheikh, then went to Cairo to wait for our visas for India. We stayed within the most inexpensive motel and relaunched our internet site from the roof.
Elizabeth: With these kinds of stray cats.
Robert: And our children petting all the cats. Then we flew to India. We stayed in Pushkar for two months–an ease region became a dollar a night. We taught Goa and did customer service in 2nd-class coach with 20 or 30 locals looking over our shoulders.
Elizabeth: There had been considerable rats in the rafters of our hut in Karnataka. I’d get beneath my mosquito net, with my flashlight and pc, and answer customer service emails. I turned into connecting to the arena and developing our enterprise even as pulling up nice water in buckets. One day, I poured a bucket of water over my head–and it was full of frogs.
Robert: I started analyzing AdWords and noticed that spending $10 gave me $32; spending $50 got me $ 50. That’s once I said, “We’re moving back to the U.S. because this is going to paintings.” In that first 12 months, sales become half of 1,000,000 bucks. Would we do it once more? No query.
Elizabeth: Yes!
Robert: Boba isn’t one of these unicorns in which, in 3 years, we’re a 1000000000-greenback commercial enterprise. I’m sure it truly is thrilling, but it sucks you in and takes the entirety. Boba is our 6th kid. Twelve years of sluggish increase. And through it all, we got to preserve the balance of our lives.