Name: Priska Diaz
Business: Bittylab, LLC
About your Business
Bittylab , LLC, headquartered in New York City, was founded in
June of 2010 by Priska Diaz, wife and mother of two children. 
Bittylab is focused
on offering innovative new products that raise the bar with quantifiable
benefits and ultimately translate to better performing products for mom and
baby. BARE air-free baby bottle is Bittylab's first in a complete line of baby
products under development. BARE air-free baby bottle mimics mechanics of
breastfeeding and mother's breast entirely -not just the nipple- from shapes
& texture to movement, storage and delivery of milk. BARE air-free baby
bottle uses a patented fluid dispensing technology with moving parts (similar
to a syringe) to maintain an air-free environment inside the bottle without air
vents to help minimize gas/colic in babies due to air ingestion. BARE also
features an expandable nipple to resemble mother's nipple action while
breastfeeding and allows baby to control the flow of milk with sucking
strength, to help prevent nipple confusion. BARE grows with your baby: The
synergistic effect of combining these innovations in one bottle allows toddler
to feed at any angle to promote development of early self-feeding and
faster/easier weaning. The same feature minimizes backwash & spit into the
bottle to reduce bacteria-growth, keeping milk fresh longer and healthier.
What inspired me to open my business
As a new mother and big proponent of breastfeeding, I was
committed to exclusively breastfeed our first son, however a low milk supply
condition caused my baby to become undernourished. My pediatrician recommended
supplemental feeding with a bottle until my milk supply improved. Bottle
feeding immediately turned my baby into a bag of gas resulting in discomfort
for him and many sleepless nights for us. Effortless feeding from a bottle
naturally leads to nipple confusion and soon my baby began to reject my breast.
I realized that baby bottles weren't working for my baby or myself. After some
time reflecting on the problem, I realized; my breasts don't have air-vents,
why should baby bottles? That was the question that gave birth to Bittylab, LLC
in June of 2010.
What has been your biggest unexpected challenge?
The biggest unexpected challenge was finding the right team of
highly qualified individuals who could provide the engineering expertise,
materials science and manufacturing capabilities I need to make my bottle a
reality. BARE works very differently than conventional bottles with air vents
by requiring parts to stretch, slide and seal. This ground breaking design
required a collaborative effort between our design engineers and plastic
material engineers. The best analogy we can offer to illustrate the technology
behind BARE is a syringe in reverse. Finding our team of experts required
numerous conversations with engineers and manufacturers with a background in
medical devices. The unique challenges of mass producing our product to sell at
a commercially acceptable price point narrowed our options to a handful of
highly qualified manufacturers around the world. Once the parts were designed
and prototype molds created, an international team of production engineers
conducted R&D testing to fine tune the function and material composition of
every part. We are very fortunate to have found such a dedicated and talented
group of professionals to help us translate the BARE baby bottle concept into a
commercially viable product.
How do you balance family and business?
Splitting mommy is very hard for everybody. I have 2
pre-schoolers that need my full attention, I feel like the only thing I'm not
doing is changing diapers, not much has changed since they were born, except
now they are 30lbs heavier, lol. While they attend preschool and summer camp, I
am dedicated to Bittylab most of the day. After school, I put on my mommy hat
and we go to the park or do something fun. Mommy also cooks dinner everyday. In
the evening, daddy takes charged while I do some more work. The weekends are
hard too! We try to go places together as much as we can, but sometimes daddy
is the lucky one who takes the kids out for long trips while I do chores around
the house, rest, maybe even catch up on my favorite TV shows, lol.
When you are really stressed, you are most likely to...
Stress happens very often. I'm the kind of person that cannot
move on to the next step without finishing the first. Usually stress translates
into pain on my shoulders, neck and head. What I do is deal with what's causing
the stress, then rest, a lot! I'm thankful that my husband can handle the kids
without a problem and understands that I need to work on BARE six, sometimes
seven days a week. I remember when my first baby was about 6 months and daddy
wanted to take him for a long trip... Although I let him, I cried for hours. I
thought what if the baby cries and he's driving, he's not going to stop, he's
not going to feed him until he ends the trip, what's going to happen if the
baby poops as soon as he leaves the house, etc. It sounds kind of funny now,
but I was very, very worried and stressed while they went away.
A piece of advice for other Moms interested in opening a business
Opening a business takes passion and dedication to justify
countless hours of work and tremendous sacrifice. My advice for anyone is to
follow their passion. Passion is the only thing that will give you strength to
overcome all barriers and challenges. If you have an idea, visualize what the
finish line will look like, sort of like putting a pin on a map, then you
figure out how to get there. The journey can take a long time or not, but you
can be sure there won't be any shortcuts. There will be many ways to get there,
so you must first identify what your choices are. Always have a back up plan
and enough supply to hold you up for the trip. Talk to as many people as
possible, like asking for directions. You never know if your neighbor's nanny
has a father who can help you out with his connections. Get social, use social
networks and reconnect, maybe that kid you went to high school with opened up a
business like yours 5 years ago and can tell you his experiences. Ask lots of
questions and don't be afraid to admit your ignorance. Show you're passionate
and putting everything you've got into your project and you'll find that most
people will try to help you succeed. Go ahead, don't be afraid to give it a try
and remember that nothing worth accomplishing in life is ever easy!
Fun fact about you
I try not to take everything too seriously, I like jokes, I joke
a lot. I love to make my children laugh, works better than frowning anyway!
It's amazing how tears easily turn into big laugh in children. They are now
almost 4 and almost 5 and begin to understand a lot of my jokes. I love when
Carlton (the oldest) thinks about what I say, then he laughs, it makes me laugh
too. In business, a good laugh in the middle of a meeting breaks the inevitable
awkward or quiet moments. Being a woman in a man-society, one has to figure out
how to motivate everyone to move at your pace. You can imagine me, in front of
a room full of male engineers, discussing my concept and explaining why it
needs to work the way I designed it, how it compares to a lactating breast, and
presenting diagrams on a big screen to show how babies latch, nipples stretch,
and demonstrating my prototypes using a breast pump. I had to joke a lot
(before they did), of course some laugh a little harder than others but overall
getting the message across was the point of the meeting. What was going in my
head was: "do these men realize that most of these pictures are of
me?"
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