Big Business Success For Mom
It’s not hard for Rebecca Matthias to remember a time when maternity clothes weren’t exactly fashion-forward.
The founder and CEO of Mothers Work – the Philadelphia company that owns maternity-wear chains A Pea in the Pod, Mimi Maternity, and Motherhood Maternity – was driven to start her business when she was pregnant with her first child. Tent dresses with garish bows and big buttons weren’t appealing, so the former engineer improvised her way through the launch of a mail-order business.
FSB: How did you end up in the apparel business? Do you have a background in fashion design?
RM: No, I studied to be an architect. I have a degree in architecture from Columbia and a degree in civil engineering from MIT. My first job was as a construction engineer at a building in Providence. I met my husband when I was a site engineer at a building for a company he was launching. Shortly after we married we moved to Boston so he could start another company, a computer business. That’s when I got pregnant and decided it was time to start my own business that I could run from home.
FSB: Why maternity clothes?
RM: A mail-order business would allow me to work from home. Now all I needed was a product. Every night we’d sit around brainstorming about what I could sell. Meanwhile, the bigger my belly got, the more I needed maternity clothes – but in 1981, ‘professional’ maternity clothes didn’t exist.
It’s very hard to reconstruct the setting back then. Women had really only started working in high-level professional careers during the 1970s. Prior to that, women weren’t in the workforce in the ways we are now – you were a secretary or a teacher until you started your family, and then you were a mom. Working through your pregnancy was revolutionary. (We tend to forget that because it’s so much a part of the culture now.)
All that was available for pregnant women was stereotypical froufrou stuff with really dumb bows and big buttons – it was very childish and nothing you’d wear to the office. I got through my pregnancy by buying regular clothes in larger sizes and being creative about finding things that fit. By the time I got to be six months pregnant, it was clear that there was a void in the market that I could serve by mail.
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