A Passion for Children's Books Becomes a Business

Meet Susheela Vasan and Deirdre Hockett, the entrepreneurial partnership behind GiftLit!

What's the best part about being a Entrepreneur?  What's the dark side?  

The Best Part according to Susheela is taking an idea and watching it grow into a business, seeing it become real. It’s a dream I’ve had all my life and I’m excited to see it actually happening.  Deirdre loves celebrating all the little milestones, like building our advisory board of literary experts, getting our first order, talking with our first customers - seeing that it’s really possible.

As for the dark side, it’s hard to juggle everything with work and family, but that’s a problem that many people face, whether they are an entrepreneur or not. One of the issues more specific to a small business is that the work can be very solitary. That’s why it’s so much fun when we can have direct contact with our customers.

Tell us about your business.

GiftLit sells monthly gifts of books in 3, 6 and 12 month collections for children, teens, adults and families. Our books are carefully chosen by our board of literary experts, including book award panelists, librarians, authors and editors. GiftLit is not just about giving books; it’s about giving back. Through our Partner Program where we donate a portion of our sales to organizations that promote literacy.

Did you become an entrepreneur before or after you had kids?  What was the primary reason you started your own business and did being a mom play into your decision?  

Susheela was involved in a number of start-ups before kids, but they were mostly larger efforts financed by VC’s.  Deirdre became involved after she had kids.   Being a mom did play into our desire to start GiftLit. We loved it when our children received books as gifts, especially well chosen books that they enjoyed, instead of those throw away plastic toys. But it’s very hard to pick books for others, particularly for grandparents buying for children far away. We saw a real need in the market and wanted to start a business that supported literacy and the connection books create between friends and family.

How important is networking to you? 

Networking is important in many different aspects of our business. It’s particularly important to network with our customers. We communicate both online and offline with our customers. We are expanding our online communications with our customers, for example, we just added a monthly email newsletter with new book recommendations. We’re also networking with organizations that support literacy, such as libraries and schools.

Do you have a mentor and if so what value have they provided?

Our advisory board of literary experts have been a tremendous resource. They have not only been invaluable in helping us select our books and group them into fun collections. They have also been great mentors, helping steer us into the world of books, acting as a sounding board and opening doors which may have otherwise been closed to us.

Are there any entrepreneur tools you wish you had better access to?  

One of the hardest parts in starting a small business is finding the right resources and services. We’ve been lucky to find great people to work with, but it was a lot of work and we had some false starts. Tools to help find the right people and professional services would be extremely valuable.

What has been your biggest challenge since launching your business? If your best friend was going to take the dive and start her own business, what 3 tips would you give her?  

Our biggest challenge has been finding the right people to work with, from choosing a partner to building an advisory board to selecting service providers.

Our 3 tips:
1. It’s all about the people – partners, employees, advisors, subcontractors, service providers.
2. Focus – Know what you want to do and stick to it.
3. Customers – Know your customers and what they need.
4. Have fun

What are the pros/cons of having a partner?

Pro’s of partners:
-    Not so solitary
-    More fun
-    Someone to bounce ideas of off
-    More experience/skills
-    Share work, share costs

Con’s:
-    Need to agree on decisions
-    Need to have similar goals and agendas
-    Sometimes hard to balance each others schedules/needs
-    Sometimes hard to equally divide things (e.g. work, costs, …)

Anything else you want to share?

One of the most exciting aspects of our business has been the dialog and relationship we’ve developed with our customers. It’s been invigorating and fun to have that contact and has helped us immeasurably in improving our products and services.

One of our key business goals has been to support literacy through our partner program by donating a portion of our sales to school and libraries. We’ve been very excited by the reception we’ve had to this program.
Please check us out at www.giftlit.com.