Mumpreneur Dominique Tillen

Dominique trained as a nurse before studying for a masters degree and working as a child health researcher. Today she is Founder and mD of Brush-Baby, a range of dental products for children. She lives near Winchester with her husband Brian, an engineering consultant, and daughter Lulu. MY LIGHT BULB moment came about ten years ago when I couldn’t find a suitable toothbrush for my six-month-old daughter. I remember her laughing just after I had given her a bottle feed, and her mouth was full of milky deposits. I thought: ‘Do I need to clean that?’

I tried to find a teether for her, but they were all huge. And when she got her first little tooth, I went to the supermarket, but all the toothbrushes were massive.

As a toddler, Lulu chewed her toothbrush, so it was quite a battle; it’s tiring trying to clean a toddler’s teeth.

I realised a lot of other parents must be in the same position, needing easyto-use products for baby gums and teeth. When my daughter was two, in 2008, I was made redundant from my sales job in the medical industry, so I decided to see if I could design a dental product that cleaned teeth while a baby chewed on it.

I took expert advice (my twin sister is a dentist), researched the market and designed the BrushBaby Chewable Toothbrush, shaped to fit the gumline and with soft silicone bristles.

I used my redundancy money to invest in the mould, had the product tested, protected and launched it.

High Street retailers were immediately interested. Today the Brush-Baby range has more than 14 products and is stocked in Boots, Tesco, Asda, Superdrug, Mothercare and JoJo Maman Bebe, and distributed to 24 countries.

www.brushbaby.co.uk