See Jane Do Everyday Women Doing Extraordinary Things
With no experience in fashion design or running a business, Delfin launched Mountain Mama with the help of friends and family. Her passion for living a healthy outdoor lifestyle has driven her to achieve great success in just over a year. Mountain Mama has been featured in People Magazine and on Good Morning America, won the APEX design award, and called “the Patagonia for pregnancy” by the LA Times. See Jane Do caught up with Delfin recently at Maria Shriver’s Women’s Conference in Long Beach, CA in October, where she was speaking about starting a business.
Can you tell us about Mountain Mama?
“Mountain Mama makes outdoor maternity apparel. Everything we make is 100% produced in the USA and most of our collection has a tiny production imprint. Our fabric comes from Los Angeles and the factory is just 15 miles away. We are locavores at home, so it seemed wrong to have a company that was shipping everything back and forth from China for example. It was actually a lot of hard work to find factories that can produce; many factories don’t have the capacity to produce domestically. It is a great California story. We promote the California lifestyle and we are creating business in California.”
What inspired you to focus on maternity clothes for women who wanted to pursue an outdoor lifestyle?
“I got pregnant of course. I was living in Tennessee and a cold winter came on fast after a muggy summer and suddenly my little belly was sticking out and I didn’t have long underwear to wear. I had taken for granted that everything that I ever needed already existed. I went online and checked a couple of shops and there was no long underwear in the whole world for maternity. So I started designing. The funny thing was at the time I was a professor and at a cross roads of figuring out what to do with my life. I was either going to be a rock climbing instructor, a designer or a professor. Now I am all of those.”
Had you been a designer before?
“No, I was an aspiring designer, but at the time rock climbing was my main passion.”
How has being a rock climber influenced Mountain Mama?
“I did my fieldwork in Peru and spent a lot of time climbing big mountains. Part of the influence of rock climbing has had on me is seeing the kinds of things that women do when their pregnant and don’t have these cultural limitations put on them. I’ve seen women just go and keep doing everything they are used to doing all the way up to the moment they deliver.”
How did you learn then to design clothes for women especially pregnant women?
“Intuitively. With the first collection I tried to reproduce a very basic outdoor wardrobe that any outdoorsy woman would wear, and turn that into a maternity version. I started experimenting on what was and wasn’t working on myself and then I was able to take all of those measurements and turn them over to a pattern maker. The catch was, I wanted everything to fit before, during and after pregnancy, which is a very tall order. You pay so much money for these clothes that I didn’t want them to get thrown away afterwards.”
We love your story because part of what you did is based on intuition. What was it that made you believe this was something that you could do?
“Well believe it or not I actually got a big boost from the bad economy. I was working as a professor and had a one-year renewable contract. When the economy fell apart the contract wasn’t renewed. I had the option to piece together adjunct work, I also did some work for the Discovery Channel writing scripts, but I kept coming back to this Mountain Mama thing. Because of the economy, I had a little extra time, but I also thought that there were all of these companies that used to produce fabrics or factories that were normally exhausted, that they might have a few openings to produce something new. So the downside became a real upside for me.”
Another issue for women is finding ways to fund their passion. How did you make that happen with your business?
“I think it is really important to have a strong message, story, and a great business plan. You’ll get conflicting messages about this, but some people will say that if you have a great idea, not to share it because people will steal it. I don’t believe in that. I believe that if you have a great product, design, and idea, you should share it. You should build community around it; you should build passion around it. I spoke to as many people as I could about my idea because nobody had done it before. I got enough good feedback that it led to some business connections. You can’t go it alone, you have to have community.
We also asked family members for small loans, so Mountain Mama is truly a family-owned business. “
What is it like to see your vision come into fruition?
“I’m living the dream. We keep saying that we are so lucky that we keep receiving so many indications every step of the way that what we are doing is the right thing. From the very first pieces I designed getting nominated and one of the pieces actually won the award to being at the Women’s Conference and surrounded by some of the most amazing, powerful, generous, brilliant, and wise women in this country is an indication that Mountain Mama is clearly speaking to people and making a difference in people’s lives.”
How has being a mom changed your life?
It has made me see everything more clearly. It has made me not compromise nearly as much. I have this time I want to spend with my baby and I want to be my best self for my baby.
What is your message to women who are thinking about following something they are passionate about?
Figure out what you are best at and what you can best deliver on. Look down the road you want to be on and figure out where the cracks are and put yourself in those cracks. Those little cracks are like a downturn in the economy and that’s where everyone else shrieks and panics and doesn’t know what to do. If you turn that into opportunity, than that is where the real gold is.
Get Involved! Resources That Support Women Entrepreneurs and Business Owners:
- Small Business Administration (Office of Women’s Business Ownership)(www.sba.gov/womeninbusiness) – The SBA is doing more than ever to help level the playing field for women entrepreneurs, who still face unique obstacles in the world of business.
- Count-Me-In (www.count-me-in.org) – This is a new fundraising organization that raises money from women for women. Loans are given from $500 to $10,000 (for first time recipients the maximum amount is $5,000).
- The Women’s Funding Network(www.wfnet.org) – Promotes the development and growth of women’s funds that empower women and girls by fostering strategic alliances among women, donors, communities and institutions.
- WomanOwned (www.womanowned.com), – Provides online business information and networking assistance as well as a number of resources for setting up / running / growing businesses.
- Ladies Who Launch( www.ladiewholaunch.com) – Join the world’s largest community of women entrepreneurs.
Join See Jane Do for a special Soiree Into Action on “Funding Your Passion”, Tuesday, November 16 at the APPLE Center, 412 Commercial Street, Nevada City, CA. Free. 6-8pm. RSVP to info@seejanedo.com.
