From baby blanket gap to $100M company: Aden + Anais

Executive overview

Reagan Moya-Jones moved from Australia to New York, couldn't find the muslin swaddle blankets ubiquitous in her home country, and saw a gap no one had filled in the US market. She spent three years figuring out supply chain and manufacturing while working full-time, raising three kids, and building the business from 8:30pm to 3:30am each night.

The business nearly collapsed in 2008 when her co-founder and closest friend exited after a dispute over funding. Reagan bought her out, brought in new investors, and kept going. Revenue crossed $1M, then $4M, then doubled every year for five years — reaching $100M after a royal baby was photographed in their blanket in 2013.

The product sold itself; the founder's job was to survive long enough to let it.

Finding the product and the gap

• Reagan noticed muslin wraps — standard across Australia — were completely unavailable in the US
• Muslin's value: lightweight, breathable, large enough to swaddle securely, softens with washing, multi-use (burp cloth, nursing cover, stroller cover, crib sheet)
• Conviction came from cultural familiarity: "Every Australian can't have this wrong"
• Co-founder Claudia (a friend, not a business partner by trade) came on board after Reagan pitched the idea on a nursery floor in LA
• The company was named after both founders' daughters: Aidan and Anais

Building supply chain from scratch

• Reagan had no manufacturing or textiles experience — she was a sales rep at The Economist
• Found her Chinese manufacturer at a textile trade show in New York, at the last booth she visited
• Getting quality right took years of back-and-forth: fabric yellowing on arrival, formaldehyde in dyes, repeated failed containers
• Hired freelance designers for initial patterns; Reagan drove aesthetic decisions despite having no formal design background
• Reagan kept the business secret from The Economist colleagues for years, never missing her sales budget

Funding and the partner breakup

• Both co-founders put in $15,000 each for the first inventory order
• Launched into the 2008 recession; Marcos and Reagan ran out of capital first
• Borrowed $100K from Claudia and Mark, then $250K from Mark's father
• Mark demanded Reagan buy them out within 30 days or dissolve the company
• Reagan raised ~$500K from three friends to buy out Claudia's 49% stake
• The friendship ended completely — Claudia never spoke to Reagan again

Growing the business solo

• From early 2008, Reagan ran sales, customer service, manufacturing, marketing, and finance alone
• Set a personal milestone: reach $1M revenue (only 2% of women-owned businesses do) before leaving her day job
• Left The Economist in May 2009 — her boss had told her a week earlier she "did not have an entrepreneurial bone in her body"
• Closed 2009 at just over $4M; revenue more than doubled every year for the next five years
• Took first private equity investment in 2010 to fund inventory scaling — demand consistently outpaced supply

Celebrity endorsement and the royal effect

• One week after launch, Adam Sandler's baby was photographed in an Aden + Anais blanket in US Weekly
• Celebrity coverage continued steadily; the company even named a paparazzi as a nod to how often their blankets appeared shielding celebrity babies
• In 2013, Prince George left St. Mary's Hospital wrapped in the "Jungle Jam" pattern — a design that had been on the market for eight years
• The company website crashed twice; the specific pattern sold out globally; resellers charged three times the retail price
• The royal moment validated the brand internationally despite it being a $49.95 four-pack product

Private equity and scale

• Swander Pace Capital bought the company in 2013; Reagan bought back in as the single largest individual shareholder
• Revenue at $100M+ by the time of recording; Reagan remained CEO
• At $30M, Reagan was hands-on across the business; at $100M, she received weekly updates and was largely removed from day-to-day
• She acknowledged a seasoned operator could scale $100M to $300M more efficiently than a self-taught CEO
• Long-term goal: build Aden + Anais into a half-billion-dollar global brand