About Us
Two sisters-in-law get started:
This is me, Meike, ...
….. Jessica's sister-in-law, who is one year younger and former midwife to her, my brother and their two adorable children. My nephew was born just a few weeks before my midwifery exam. As a newly qualified midwife and still green behind the ears, I was bursting with advice and care and wanted to be the best midwife in the world for my family.
Two years later my sweet niece was born and by then I had gained more experience and was able to provide further support with even more good advice.
I have been a freelance midwife in wonderful Berlin for more than 10 years now. I love this city and my job with all my heart.
This work gave rise to the idea for myEphelia.
and this is me, Jessica, ...
... the one who married Meike's older brother. I am not only a happy wife and proud mother of two children, but also the cat owner of our company and family cat Kalea.
As a business graduate, I worked as a management consultant and management assistant in completely different industries for over 10 years and had no professional contact with the topics of pregnancy and the postpartum period. But I was excited by the idea and the challenge and so I became part of myEphelia.
While Meike is more of a creative head, based on my professional experience I am responsible for the commercial and organizational aspects, the perfect complement!
How it all began...
It has always been important to Meike to provide the best possible support to the families she cares for and to help them with problems or complications. And that was also the trigger for us to found myEphelia.
Mutual friends of ours had their first child and her breastfeeding relationship also got off to a rocky start, her son had to be fed at the beginning and our friend's tears just rolled down.
That was basically the birth of myEphelia.
Meike: That's exactly how it was! Ideas for certain solutions to problems have been bubbling in my head for many years - especially when it comes to breastfeeding. But at this moment the time had come to finally tackle this and put it into action. I infected Jessica with this drive and enthusiasm and convinced her to accompany me on this path.
It's all easy peasy... Are we crazy to really start a startup?!
The idea was there, our creative minds were smoking like crazy. We met almost every day and after work we literally sat in the basement and worked on it. We developed the first homemade prototypes ourselves and tested them on women who Meike cared for. The response was consistently positive.
So we thought: “All we have to do is find a production facility, create a business plan and register a patent, it should be possible somehow.”
The “just” turned out to be more difficult than expected in some things… but more on that later.
We have now found a great business coach who supports us in our project and also recognized the potential of Meike's ideas.
During this coaching session, our ears were buzzing about all the tasks and costs we would have to face and what kind of hassle the founding of a startup would entail.
But we rose to the challenge and continued along the path, step by step, until we founded myEphelia GmbH in October 2021.
Good things take time...
... is undoubtedly the motto of our product, which we want to bring to the market for those with breastfeeding difficulties. Simply finding a production facility turned out to be much more difficult than expected. Especially since we don't come from this industry and Corona made the whole search much more difficult. Which production facility are you looking for exactly and where? Germany or EU-wide? What materials are best to use? What should the design be? Which requirements must be observed? What should the packaging look like? Questions upon questions…..
Here too, we are now well on our way and can proudly announce that the patents for our passion project have already been submitted.
Our philosophy: quality, lightness, empathy and joy in family life
From the very beginning, there was also the idea of bringing additional products onto the market that were also aimed at the needs of pregnant women, women giving birth, breastfeeding women and young mothers/young families.
Our goal is to welcome you in this very special time
to adequately support each phase of life and to offer high-quality products. myEphelia not only stands for quality, but also for lightness, empathy and joy in family life.
So we are starting our market entry with excellent organic herbal teas developed especially for you for pregnancy, birth preparation, postpartum and postnatal periods.
myEphelia: more than just a company name. Because family is the most important thing
myEphelia. Why Ephelia?
Originally the company was supposed to have a different name, which also had a special meaning for me, Meike. Full of anticipation, I was looking forward to the logo and lettering until, after repeated research, we came across a similar company name.
So another name was needed that was just as meaningful as the previous one. I had a very special one floating around in my head and I shared it with Jessica. With joy and tears in her eyes, she just nodded in agreement, because Ephelia is her daughter's middle name.
While I had already included my nephew in my previous work as a midwife, including on my homepage, it was clear to me that now the time had come for the second one in the group.
And this name is perfect, it is sensual, soft and yet strong at the same time. All characteristics that our company also has.