A Family Business Started While Traveling the World
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An inspirational story of a family, a dream, baby wearing and many passport stamps.
Parents always ask us what kind of stroller they should buy here in Rome, my answer is always “a used one”! Using a stroller to get around Rome is a bit like trying to navigate one of the rings of Dante’s Inferno. A good part of the streets here do not have sidewalks, think Trastevere and a stroller…… The areas that do have sidewalks with zebra crossings invariably have someone parked on the stripes making crossing the street difficult to say the least. I once had to take my daughter out of her stroller, close the thing up, carry her, the stroller and diaper bag while shimmying through the eye of the needle between TWO cars parked on the strisce. And public transport with a stroller? HA! The majority of metro stops don’t have elevators and the buses have bars in the middle of the entry ways making it impossible for most strollers to fit in the doors. It is because of Rome’s navigational challenges that I became an avid baby wearer. It was not because I was espousing a “parenting philosophy” it was due to necessity! It was later that I learned of the myriad benefits of baby wearing for both parents and babies. When going to trade shows I was always on the look out for good ergonomic baby carriers and wraps, it was at a show in Paris that I got to meet Robert Antunovic and hear the wonderful story of he and his wife starting their company Boba as they traveled around the world with their children.
Robert met his future wife, and business partner, Elizabeth while she was working as an English teacher in Eastern Europe. He happened to be cycling through the town of Kosice, Slovakia en route from Slovenia to explore some neighboring countries. For a meeting of chance and at first not even speaking a common language, they were determined to figure out a way to make things work. They started their life together in Slovenia and then moved to Boulder, CO.
They left Boulder, Colorado in April of 2007 and took a year off to start a business and travel the world with their 2 kids on a tight budget, and simply live. They gave everything they had away and just took off – a few thousand dollars, 2 backpacks and 2 kids. They were adamant about finding out how to combine both work and pleasure and to really try to live the dream of traveling while working simultaneously. They knew that this baby carrier idea of theirs wouldn’t go away and had huge potential. Yet, starting a business from scratch while traveling the world with 2 kids was something they would need to put some effort into. They felt that they were up to it.
After leaving Boulder they spent the summer of 2007 in Ireland and the Balkans, a month in Egypt, and most of their time in the desert of Rajasthan and the tropics of Karnataka in south India. They sold their first wrap when they were in wine country, rural Slovenia. They knew they had a great product. Elizabeth says that it was so incredibly surreal that some beautiful mother (that they didn’t even know) came to their website, liked what they had to offer, and actually purchased a baby wrap.
They left Europe when the business started to roll (a.k.a. after they sold two baby carriers 🙂 ) They stayed up late nights and answered customer service emails from rooftops in
Cairo, Alexandria, Varanasi, and Ahmadabad. They worked on trains, from hammocks, in adobe huts, and under mosquito nets. They wrote emails on the shores of the Adriatic, Arabian, Red and the Mediterranean seas. The vivid image of their two kids on an overcrowded Indian train, taking a 48 hour non-stop trip down south with 20+ Indian men encircling them and peering over their shoulders while they typed customer service emails will stay with Elizabeth forever. Even in places with no running water, they were connected through wireless mobile internet. Wherever they were, on whichever continent, they could turn on their laptop and connect to the rest of the world.
Somehow they managed to do it all while we were on the road. In the beginning it was just Elizabeth and Robert and an outsourced fulfillment house based in Michigan. Sometimes Elizabeth looks back and tries to figure out how they ever did it all alone from the other side of the world.
For Elizabeth, it truly is something to see their carriers all over the world and knowing at the same time that each one of these carriers starter as a simple prototype idea tested with her own kids. When she and Robert see a parent wearing their babe in a Boba they know that all of their efforts have not been in vain.
They are still a family run business and though the majority of Elizabeth’s time is occupied with raising their five beautiful kids, she is involved in design, prototyping, fabric selection and different projects as needed or desired. She especially loves getting out there and working with academia, pregnancy care centers and hospitals on education and the importance of keeping babies close.
Robert keeps busy with travels, meetings and exploring new opportunities. One of those opportunities was having Gabby Caperon and her Beco baby carriers join the Boba family in 2016. They also bought a small family run fabric mill in North Carolina at the beginning of 2017. They’ve already run their first baby carrier fabric production there.
Their eldest daughter Isabela just designed her first Boba Carrier (Octabela) in 2017. Now it really is a true family business.
To see more Boba wraps and carriers, check out their online store.
