5 Minutes With... Rosie Pope

Designer, entrepreneur, and pregnancy guru Rosie Pope has a lot on her plate. She has an eponymous line of maternity clothes, a retail store on Madison Avenue, and MomPrep, a pregnancy concierge and parent education business. Since we last spoke with Pope and husband/business partner Daron, they have been focused on growing their business to provide more than clothing to expecting parents. They have relaunched a more robust e-commerce site, and created an online community with original pregnancy and parenting content. This spring, the business was featured in a Bravo TV reality series, Pregnant in Heels, and the couple had a second child. (To read NY Report’s original profile on Rosie Pope Maternity, click here.) Here, Rosie and Daron chat with NY Report executive editor Daria Meoli about their changing business, work/life balance, and being more than just a fashion brand.

Daria Meoli: In the past 18 months, how have your roles within the business changed?

Rosie Pope: I’ve certainly been able to focus less on the business side of things so I can create the content for rosiepope.com. I’ve been thinking about ways to be available to as many people as possible, every possible moment. I’m focused on how to re-create my own thoughts online, as well as how to bring the experts who I really value and who help me with my parenting skills to other people.

Daron Pope: On my side of the business, a lot of what I was doing a year ago was infrastructure—just making sure we were set up to grow—and now we’re purely focused on growth. We’ve been hiring pretty aggressively and some of that was to free Rosie up for the content creation. But now we’re looking at other markets, new stores, and some new distribution channels.

DM: What are your goals for the Rosie Pope brand?

RP: When someone wants to buy a piece of clothing from us, I want them to be able to get a piece of education. It’s more than a fashion brand. So if they buy a dress, they’re getting something else online, whether it’s support, advice from an expert, or just being part of a community. They’re purchasing a step closer to being the parent they want to be.

DP: This store is so unique and special to people because it creates a baby shower-type environment and we want to add education and wellness to that. It works so well in New York City that we just want to bring it to other markets as quickly as possible.

DM: Do you believe work/life balance is possible?

RP: I believe in it; but I don’t know if I practice it. I don’t know if balance is the word I’d use to describe our life but I think we do a pretty good job in achieving with work and achieving with family.

DP: I think that this whole company is such a focus of ours that it’s become part of life. The lines are blurred between the two. The balance is just different. Some people may choose not to be working at 11:30 on a Monday night, but we’re into that. We care about the brand and where it’s going. Things just seem to fall into balance for us.