“Parents deserve better.” This was the vision Phoebe Simmonds and Kate Casey had when they decided to launch The Memo, a platform designed to rethink how parents shop for baby essentials, in 2019.
In an interview with RetailBiz on the sidelines of Klaviyo’s K:SYD event, Simmonds shared that eight years ago, Casey—who was pregnant at the time—recognised a significant gap in the market for a retailer that truly focused on meeting parents’ needs.
“My co-founder Kate was pregnant eight years ago and she walked into big box retail really excited about this time in her life and then she walks straight out again,” Simmonds said.
“It was an incredibly overwhelming experience because it was cluttered with a lot of product and it was quite underwhelming because there wasn’t much focus on the customer and her actual needs.”
As a former brand manager at Mecca, Casey recognised that the level of exceptional customer experience common in the beauty industry was largely missing from the baby product space.
It was a natural fit. Her vision struck a chord with Simmonds, who brought a wealth of brand-building expertise from major companies, including luxury giant LVMH.
“I instantly was like, ‘Wow, that’s a really important category that needs to be addressed.’ I went home and I had a look at how the marketing was, how brands were communicating, and I thought that there was a lot of room for creating a brand that was sophisticated,” Simmonds said.
Inspired by that insight, the duo began brainstorming and developed a carefully considered curation, laying the groundwork for what would become The Memo.
“It’s not just about thousands of products. It’s about trusting a brand to curate only the things that you might need,” Simmonds emphasised.
Drawing from her own experience, Casey built an initial assortment based on a personal list of essentials, which became a trusted source passed from friend to friend.
“We brought that curation from the list into The Memo’s original assortment. It was 400 products. We now have 3,000. We launched an online store in October 2019 and our first physical retail store opened in Armadale in September 2022,” Simmonds said.
Over the years, The Memo opened three more stores in Fitzroy and Maribyrnong in Melbourne and in Bondi Junction in Sydney.
The Memo’s success comes from its ability to thoughtfully curate a selection of essential products from top brands in Australia and around the world, supporting parents through every stage of their journey—from preconception and pregnancy to postpartum and breastfeeding.
“Premium positioning is really important to us and we try to cut through a lot of the clutter and help the customer really understand that she doesn’t need everything and she doesn’t feel the need to feel like she needs everything,” she said.
“We do a lot of work with events and bringing in experts to add value to our customers’ experience, helping them really understand this category so they can make informed decisions. We really talk about how we’re not just interested in selling stuff, anyone can do that.”
As The Memo seeks to further expand its footprint, the company plans to open a store in Queensland by next year.
“We’ve got a few different locations that we’re looking at. We’re really keen to have a location in Queensland, so we’re working hard to find the perfect place then,” Simmonds said.