Mother's, and daughter's, challenges, inspired Baby Be Hip

Colleen Mook's business began somewhat indelicately, inspired by an experience familiar to all parents of newborns.

"She was a baby that spit up a lot," Mook said of her firstborn, Molly.

That meant burp cloths were a must. And after seeing enough of them, Mook thought: "I can do this."

By "this," she meant personalize the towels, figuring: "All babies spit up. Why not let them spit up in style?"

That was in 2002, when Mook started Baby Be Hip, a company specializing in personalized gifts commemorating new arrivals.

Though Molly's birth would be the impetus for the business, the birth of another daughter - one with monumental physical challenges and special needs - would give its founder the mettle to press on in the wilds of small-business ownership.

After all, at age 6, Ellie Mook - born with a chromosome abnormality (tandem duplication 11q23-ter) and believed to be possibly the only known living person in the world with her condition - cannot speak or walk, has already endured more medical procedures than most people will in a lifetime, including heart and hip surgeries, and has spent 10 months in a full-body cast.

What are business headaches when measured against that?

"Whenever I am unsure and need to push myself to go for it, I just look at her picture and say I am doing it for Ellie," said Mook, who keeps a photo of her little inspiration tacked to the center of a vision board in her office.

It's an otherwise unremarkable space, tucked in the rear of Baby Be Hip's quarters in a light-industrial park in Horsham. The total workspace is just 2,400 square feet, but a universe compared with the basement of Mook's former Bryn Mawr home, where the company began.

Back then, she outsourced the embroidery work. In 2005, she decided to do it in-house. She bought an embroidering machine for $40,000 and rented 600 square feet of commercial space in Bryn Mawr as Baby Be Hip's product line and orders grew, mostly through word of mouth, a website, and invaluable exposure in American Baby magazine. Mook also invested $35,000 - more than half that year's sales - in a new e-commerce site and other Internet marketing.

"We were ready to ramp it up. We were doing everything right, we thought," recalled Mook, a Cheltenham native and Villanova University graduate. "Then this one came along, born with many issues."

She gave a gentle hug to a beaming Ellie, who sat on her mother's lap at Baby Be Hip during an interview this month. Mook relocated the company to Horsham in 2008, one year after moving her family to the township to be closer to relatives and their help with Ellie.

Now 39 and the mother of four, Mook got tearful as she recounted the hours and days after Ellie's birth on Nov. 22, 2005, when "everything started going wrong." There were breathing issues and worries the baby might be deaf. (She was not.) Then came chromosome tests and discoveries of a heart defect and severe hip dysplasia. After Ellie was released from the hospital, she was back three or four days a week for doctors' appointments.

So Mook, chief executive officer of a fledgling company she had just positioned for a growth push, in large part disappeared from the business to care for Ellie. A friend stepped in and managed the company while Mook made what contributions she could from home.

When Ellie turned 3? and was able to go to preschool, Mook said, she took a year for herself, even though that mostly meant grocery shopping, doing laundry, and otherwise running what was then a household of two adults and three children.

Colleen and Brad Mook's fourth child, Delaney, was born in July 2010 and marked another turning point for Baby Be Hip: "I started using our products and realized the business needed some TLC," Colleen said.

That took the form of a new website, a freshening of product lines, and a renewed interest by Mook in being actively involved in her company.

Baby Be Hip's cumulative revenues thus far: $750,000; its workforce: just six part-time employees. In Colleen Mook's sights is an annual-revenue goal of $1 million, which she thinks she can reach in three to five years. So do a number of business experts, who chose Mook as one of 43 "winners" of the Make Mine a Million $ Business competition held in Philadelphia in September for female owners of small businesses.

Among the prizes Mook received were six private business-development coaching sessions, where she met Jonathan Jordan of the Coach Connection, based in Fort Myers, Fla.

"I'm helping her realize the whole spectrum of needs in running a business," Jordan said of his continuing coaching relationship with Mook.

That includes a systematic approach to attracting major corporate clients around Philadelphia, as well as developing a better understanding of the significance of business numbers. For example, bigger gross sales do not necessarily mean bigger net profits. Jordan said he had also counseled Mook against buying a second embroidering machine and had urged her instead to maximize use of the one she has. That could be accomplished, for instance, by adding a second shift, he said.

When he met Mook, she, like many new entrepreneurs, had "a great idea, passion and no idea how to run a business" Jordan said. "She's now thinking much more as a business owner, truly seeing the wider spectrum ... vs. focused on producing a product."

Mook is considering applying for a line of credit "to get us to the next level," one that enables Baby Be Hip to actually make some of the clothing and other products it currently now only decorates. She also wants to be able to afford to have a full-time workforce - and offer each employee benefits.

Arguably, few bosses understand the importance of benefits, especially health-care coverage, as keenly as Mook does - thanks to Ellie.

Actually, Mook thanks her a lot. She did so in a public way in November for Ellie's sixth birthday, when she posted a letter to her daughter on Baby Be Hip's blog (http://www.babybehip.com/2011/11/open-letter-to-my-ellie).

"Your physical and mental disabilities are a daily challenge for me, but your goodness and your wholesomeness are worth all of it and then some," Mook wrote. "Thanks for being my kid. I love you! Mommy."

Contact Diane Mastrull at 215-854-2466 or dmastrull@phillynews.com, or follow @mastrud on Twitter.