Meet Kristin and Mauro Riley of The Car Seat Key

Today we’d like to introduce you to Kristin and Mauro Riley.

Thanks for sharing your story with us Kristin and Mauro. So, let’s start at the beginning and we can move on from there.
My brother and I invented a product called The Car Seat Key. The Car Seat Key easily slides over the red buckle on a child’s car seat and with slight pressure releases the harnesses. It’s stored on a keychain so it’s easily accessible and safely out of the reach from the child. What intrigues people about our story is that we are in fact siblings (everyone assumes we’re married which is so sick) and we actually don’t have any kids.

I’m a manicurist and would constantly hear women in the salon complaining about not only their husbands but how hard it is to get kids out of car seats. Always needing their nails shorter or completely taken off once they became a mom. Also, we would always see our mom struggle to get our nieces and nephews out of their car seats due to her arthritis. I realized how big this problem actually was and wondered why there wasn’t an easy solution. So, I went to my younger brother for help with a prototype. He honestly thought I was fucking crazy but was willing to help.

The next day he had our first prototype cut out in wood. From there we made our own mold and started pouring our own resin. That was a disaster but we tried right? We realized it needed to be manufactured so the next 7 months were hours and hours of research, little sleep, and lots of coffee. Researching everything from manufacturing, plastics, patents, packaging, marketing, websites, and everything in between.

We launched our product last March of 2017. Our business is growing faster than we can keep up with at this point and we were both just able to officially quit our “real jobs” to focus on our company. We are sold on our e-commerce website, Amazon, and in stores in 5 different countries. Now we’re ready to transition into big retailers and play in the major leagues as we like to call it. Some people have asked if we came from a family of inventors or manufacturers, this couldn’t be further from the truth. The only reason we mention this is because we want people to know that you can literally do anything that you dream of. We had no idea what we were doing but we wanted it bad enough and we weren’t going to let anything stop us.

Giving back to our community and encouraging people to pursue their dreams is a big part of what our company is about. Our product is called The Car Seat Key but our company is NAMRA. This stands for “the state of being humble”. It’s a constant reminder to always stay grateful, always stay humble and to never forget where you came from. We hope that your readers can see that we are proof that dreams are possible and hopefully, to inspire them to pursue theirs as well!

Has it been a smooth road?
We don’t believe that anything worth doing comes with a smooth road. If it’s a smooth road then have a bigger goal or plan. Get out of your comfort zone. We have had roadblocks pretty much since we first started. The first manufacturer that we worked with didn’t make our mold right.

Not only was that a 5 thousand dollar loss (which we didn’t have at the time) but it also pushed back our launch date by months. We’ve had many bumps in the road since then but we seem to come out stronger with each hurdle that we get over. We feel like it’s all in your perception and view each roadblock as a learning experience.

Side note: This does not mean that we don’t have mental breakdowns once in a while because we totally do lol!

So let’s switch gears a bit and go into The Car Seat Key story. Tell us more about the business.
We pretty much run every aspect of our company. All self-taught.

My brother Mauro learned everything you need to know about Amazon, Seo’s, social media ads, etc. All of the back end stuff that looks like a foreign language to most people.

He sat there for endless hours and taught himself. That kind of self-motivation makes me grateful that he is my business partner.

We make all of our own social media content and really try and put a personal feel on everything we put out. We show behind the scenes and certain processes we go through.

We answer all of our own comments and DMs. People know the faces behind the brand and that gives them a sense of trust. That is a big part of what we think sets us apart from other companies.

How do you think the industry will change over the next decade?
We feel that The Car Seat Key is well on its way to being a household name and one of the trendiest baby products on the market.

Pricing:

• Retail price- $14.99

Contact Info:

• Website: www.thecarseatkey.com
• Phone: 800-671-6238
• Email: [email protected]
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thecarseatkey/?hl=en
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/thecarseatkey/

Getting in touch: VoyageLA is built on recommendations from the community; it’s how we uncover hidden gems, so if you know someone who deserves recognition please let us know here.