{"id":11,"date":"2015-08-27T11:36:07","date_gmt":"2015-08-27T18:36:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/magazine.hmc.edu\/summer-2015\/?p=11"},"modified":"2015-09-03T17:27:47","modified_gmt":"2015-09-04T00:27:47","slug":"pariday-is-a-moms-breast-friend","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/magazine.hmc.edu\/summer-2015\/pariday-is-a-moms-breast-friend\/","title":{"rendered":"Pariday is a Mom’s “Breast” Friend"},"content":{"rendered":"

Women by warned:<\/strong> There are \u201cparts of motherhood no one tells you about.\u201d<\/p>\n

This is the mantra of Pariday LLC, the company started in 2011 by Jackie Lai \u201999 and two other moms who wanted to take some of the mystery and misery out of mothering.<\/p>\n

The idea to help nursing moms first came up over coffee with her friend Erin Vitus when Lai was on maternity leave from the product design firm D2M. The two women soon began commiserating about the difficulties and pain they experienced breastfeeding their newborns. Lai says she experienced many issues with breastfeeding, ranging from pain to embarrassing leaks. They knew that breastfeeding pain was the number one reason women stopped breastfeeding prematurely and wanted to provide new moms with a \u201cSwiss Army Knife\u201d product that could help them get over the initial hump of breastfeeding. They also shared their frustrations about the inadequate and antiquated \u201csolutions\u201d for sore breasts, including cabbage leaves and icepacks made from frozen peas. Commercial products were expensive, lasted only a couple of days and left a sticky residue that needed to be washed off before it was safe to nurse again.<\/p>\n

The conversation could have ended there, but both women realized that between them\u2014Lai, an engineering major, earned a master\u2019s degree in structural engineering from Stanford in 2002, and Vitus has a master\u2019s in mechanical engineering\u2014 they had the perfect combination of design and manufacturing experience to develop a better product and bring it to market.<\/p>\n

Strategy in place, Lai left D2M and at a meeting to launch Pariday, she and Vitus laid out their plans for the company, including a commitment to put family first. The two began prototyping gel packs in their kitchens. They also brought in Mara Lowry, who has an MBA and marketing background. Lai credits Lowry\u2019s environmental consciousness for their eventual development of a vegetarian, compostable gel that is used for the company\u2019s TendHer Pillows and Perineal Packs. Lai says, \u201cWe wanted to use something that would not harm mom or baby if it leaked. It might be gross, but it won\u2019t hurt you.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Lai<\/a>
Lai with her son Ettan and daughter Avani<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Lai says the three partners have different parenting styles and personalities but work well together and complement each other. They do most of their work independently, from their homes, trusting each other to get tasks done when they are not tending to the needs of their young children. (Lai\u2019s son, Ettan, is now 5 and her daughter, Avani, is 3.)<\/p>\n

The plan is working: They have gone from selling their very first gel pad in April 2012 to developing a nationwide network of retailers for Pariday\u2019s TendHer product line. The gel-filled, long-lasting pillows soothe on contact, fit discreetly in a bra and can be warmed or cooled and worn with a reusable fabric sleeve to help ease breastfeeding discomfort and absorb leaks. Customer reviews on Amazon rate the pillows 4.5 out of 5 stars. In 2014, they tripled their 2013 revenues, and this year they are on track to triple last year\u2019s sales. The company recently introduced the TendHer Perineal Packs because, according to Pariday marketing materials, \u201cNo matter your birth story, labor and delivery leave you a little sore in places you\u2019d rather not talk about.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Pariday trio gathers monthly for \u201cbuilds\u201d in Lai\u2019s Sunnyvale, California, garage. Their capacity has increased from fewer than 100 pillows in a day to about 1,000. After spending almost a decade of her career engineering cars (Lai worked for both GM and Volkswagen), Lai loves using her skills in another way. \u201cI literally touch every single thing that goes out. That gives me the direct satisfaction of knowing that I am helping somebody out there,\u201d she says. Lai also teaches a weekly therapeutic prenatal yoga class for the same reason: The reward of making a difference in other people\u2019s lives.<\/p>\n

When Lai left her home in Singapore to attend Harvey Mudd she never envisioned becoming an entrepreneur. She says she never thought of herself as \u201cgrad school material\u201d and is thankful she was encouraged to apply to Stanford by engineering Professor Ziyad Dur\u00f3n \u201981. After grad school in 2002, she and Rohit Mishra \u201900, a casual acquaintance at the time, became part of a new electronics research lab at Volkswagen. The two were married in 2007, and Mishra\u2019s support has been vital to the success of the new venture, says Lai.<\/p>\n

Lai\u2019s next goal for Pariday is for more people to know what it is. \u201cPariday is dedicated to creating elegant solutions to some of life\u2019s least elegant moments. We want Pariday to be the go-to, must-have products for new moms and to be in everybody\u2019s baby shower package within the next few years,\u201d she says. \u201cThe thing about baby showers is that the baby gets everything and the mom gets nothing. We want to be there for the mom.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Women by warned: There are \u201cparts of motherhood no one tells you about.\u201d This is the mantra of Pariday LLC, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":162,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-features"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/magazine.hmc.edu\/summer-2015\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/magazine.hmc.edu\/summer-2015\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/magazine.hmc.edu\/summer-2015\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/magazine.hmc.edu\/summer-2015\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/magazine.hmc.edu\/summer-2015\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/magazine.hmc.edu\/summer-2015\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/magazine.hmc.edu\/summer-2015\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/162"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/magazine.hmc.edu\/summer-2015\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/magazine.hmc.edu\/summer-2015\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/magazine.hmc.edu\/summer-2015\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}