Ernst & Young Ireland Entrepreneur of the year 2011 – BubbleBum (UK) Ltd – Grainne Kelly

Host: “From all over the island or Ireland they have come.

Mum of 2 Grainne Kelly is the creator of BubbleBum, an inflatable bring-anywhere car booster seat. In just 2 years sales from her Derry company have sky-rocketed in 20 countries worldwide.”

Grainne: “One of the reasons BubbleBum is becoming a growing success is that I am ridiculously impatient. It’s one of those wonderful attributes that you get in trouble for all through your life. Right through school I was the disruptive student, I had the attention span and focus of a goldfish. But I constantly was moving to the next thing because I was getting bored and it has now become a virtue.”

Best Booster Seats for Kids – Fox News

Female Presenter: “An alarming new study out this morning for you at home if you’re a parent. Half of all child booster seats pose some kind of a risk to your child. That report coming from the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety. So which ones are the safest for your children?”

Male Presenter: “It will surprise you I promise you. Alison Rhodes is the safety mom and author of ‘Honey, I Lost the Baby in the Produce Aisle’. She joins us now. And let me just tell you this Alison, when I looked at these and you told me I had exactly flip-flopped the ones which are the safest. I think a lot of parents need to pay more attention to what they’re putting their kids in.”

Alison Rhodes: “You’re going to be surprised, because what it really is, is the belt positioning. All of these look great but the reality is the lower lap belt has to be by their hips. If it rides up and there’s an accident, that’s where all their organs are. That’s where something’s going to happen to their stomach, their kidneys. So it’s the fit of the belt that makes the difference. Now we’re talking booster 40lbs and above.”

Male Presenter: “But what about the shoulder? I thought that was the important thing in terms of if that hits you on the neck or if that hits you on the chest.”

Alison Rhodes: “The shoulder is also important; it needs to come right here, not up here, not down there. But the reality is right down here, it’s got to be right on their hips. So let’s look at what the insurance institute did, it ranked them not by not recommended, better and best and you will be surprised. But you know what, there’s a lot of practicality too. If you have 2 or 3 kids in the car, you need 3 seats that go across.”

Male Presenter: “It’s hard to get 3 in”

Alison Rhodes: “It’s hard! So at the end here we have not the greatest. And the reason we don’t have the greatest is because it doesn’t allow the lap to fit properly.”

Male Presenter: “If you could go over here to show us exactly where the problem comes in?”

Alison Rhodes: “I will, see right here well we’ve got 2 lap parts right there where the shoulder is. But also this will allow the lap part to rise up, it doesn’t make it snug. That’s the problem. It also is reclining and the legs don’t fit properly, it’s too wide for their legs to sit over properly, that’s why that’s not the best.”

Male Presenter: “Looks can be very deceiving, because that one looks the safest.”

Alison Rhodes: “Exactly!”

Female Presenter: “You would think if the belt rises to the stomach area, it’s going to be more secure versus down here. That’s where the organs are right?”

Alison Rhodes: “Not good, exactly. Dangerous, dangerous. This one is a better bet, and one of the reasons is it has this sure-latch system. So easy to install, you know it’s a problem sometimes”

Male Presenter: “If you can, let me show you what this means. These are the latches that go in between the seats on pretty much all new cars these days.”

Alison Rhodes: “So this is a better bet, because it can thread through, it’s deeper here so it’s going to allow it to sit properly. But it is heavy, it’s big when you’re trying to get it in. And then we had the best bets. Now there’s a bunch of best bets…”

Male Presenter: “Real quick, this one is Evenflo…”

Alison Rhodes: “Yeah, The Symphony”

Male Presenter: “The first one is from whom?”

Alison Rhodes: “Safety 1^st”

Male Presenter: “And that was the worst”

Alison Rhodes: “That was not recommended. This is Evenflo Symphony; better. OK are you ready?”

Female Presenter: “Which one’s the best?”

Male Presenter: “This is stunning to me.”

Alison Rhodes: “Are you ready?”

Female Presenter: “That’s the best.”

Alison Rhodes: “One of the best, BubbleBum. Can you believe this?

Male Presenter: “No, I don’t!”

Alison Rhodes: “This is the most easy, realistic and cheap. Well here’s why.

Male Presenter: “What makes it the best?

Female Presenter: “It’s small, easy to transport and inexpensive.”

Alison Rhodes: “Yeah, this one’s small and easy to transport. You blow it up, you blow it up, you can take it with you and look, this is why, because with the seatbelt you thread it through, so you know you’re going to get it to fit snuggly.”

Male Presenter: “But I have something similar to this from Graco I believe or maybe it was from Evenflo and the seat belt cuts right across here, across the neck region.”

Alison Rhodes: “OK, here’s why you have this. This goes on the shoulder belt, you can tighten it so it gets it to fit properly.”

Male Presenter: “OK”

Alison Rhodes: “Now a lot of mums at home are going to say but if they’re sleeping they’re going to fall over. It depends what you want, but for an older kid they don’t want a big one they want a small one.”

Female Presenter: “They just want to sit higher.”

Alison Rhodes: “Yep!”

Male Presenter: “These are all from 40lbs and more information on your website?”

Alison Rhodes: “www.SafetyMom.com”

Male Presenter: “Safety Mom.com is also on Twitter, so check her out there. Alison Rhodes always a pleasure.”

US Insurance Institute Names 31 Car Booster Seats ‘Best Bets’

Liz Cho: “Did you know that children sitting in a booster seat are 45% less likely to be injured in a car crash than those using only seat belts. Well a new study says half of booster seats can’t ensure proper fit when all the safety belts are used. Eyewitness News reporter Nina Pineda is here now to explain. Nina.”

Nina Pineda: “Liz, there’s such a variety of styles, colours and prices, you can get side-tracked from what’s really important. The function of a booster is to make a regular seatbelt fit correctly. On most of the popular models tested parents were warned: check the fit, because the seat belt may not safely restrain in a wreck.”

Dr Alisa Baer: “We have a new one for you to try out.”

Nina Pineda: “The few inches a booster seat lifts your child can make a big difference in a crash.”

Dr Alisa Baer: “The seatbelt can only work if it’s in the right place on the body.”

Nina Pineda: “As a paediatrician certified child passenger safety instructor, Dr Alisa Baer has seen too many kids injured when they are not properly restrained. She hails the new safety ratings put out by the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, which tested 62 booster seats and designated 31 best and many of the worst bets, by how the seats position seatbelts on children in cars, SUVs and minivans.”

Anne McCartt: “It’s belts, not boosters that restrain kids in crashes.”

Nina Pineda: “Boosters are for kids who are too big for a car seat but still too small for a seat belt to fit them properly.”

Dr Alisa Baer: “This difference with this being proper fit and that being improper fit can mean the difference between serious life altering injuries”

Nina Pineda: “Without a booster there’s a gap between the 6-year olds back and the vehicle seat and his knees don’t bend at the edge. The study showed a $15 booster worked better than some costing several hundred. This new portable blow up seat was shown to keep a child safer than some with elaborate headrests.”

Dr Alisa Baer: “It raises it up so that the shoulder belt fits him more comfortably and he is less tempted to put it behind his back.”

Nina Pineda: “The shoulder belt should rest across collarbone and sternum. If it’s against the neck your child is sitting too low and is not safe.”

Dr Alisa Baer: “Some kids can’t resist the urge to sit like this, if they can’t they still need a booster seat.”

Nina Pineda: “Don’t go by age or weight, there’s no magic combination, it depends on your child shape. To learn more about how to perform these simple safety checks go to our websites and online, go to your computer, iPad or smartphone, you can also check if your seat made the best or the worst bet. Liz and Bill.”

Grainne Kelly, in finals of Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year Award 2011

Host: “I’ll tell you what, I’m glad to be back behind the wheel of my own car. After a quick cup of tea and a sandwich, I’m on the road North to Derry to meet the next entrepreneur, who definitely values safety on the road.

Derry native, Grainne Kelly came up with the idea for BubbleBum after years of frustrating encounters with car rental companies. Whenever she and her family travelled their rented car was rarely equipped with the booster seats which she had pre booked. So Grainne came up with a novel idea to invent an inflatable seat and flew to China to get a  manufacturing company on board. Many months later and after a raft of safety tests, BubbleBum was for sale online and on the shelves of top retail stores.”

Host: “So all of this came from basically frustration with the real lack of available proper booster seats out there?”

Grainne: “Yeah”

Host: “So you said, ‘hey if there’s no one else out there doing it, I’m going to do it’? It’s that simple?”

Grainne: “Well necessity is the mother of invention, and that was a necessity. And mammies don’t like to wait around you know.”

Host: “They just go and do things?”

Grainne: “Mammies just do it. I also realised that the manufacturer of an inflatable car seat was never going to walk across the front of my TV screen. So I had to do something about it and nobody else was going to do it for me, so I decided to set on an adventure myself”

Host: “What did people say to you, when you told them ‘I’m off to China’?”

Grainne: “They thought I was nuts, they thought I was absolutely nuts, but hey so what, maybe I am nuts. But it seems to be working alright for me!”

Host: “BubbleBum’s growth has been exceptional and the product is now being sold in 20 countries including the United States. But success in the American market wasn’t a push over and the family made a big more to realise the dream of selling across the Atlantic.”

Grainne: “I have a wonderful husband and I have wonderful children who all support me. But we all work together on this. My husband actually gave up his job and we moved to America, because he believed in what we were doing and he’s now working with me as well. So we’ve moved our whole family to America, to the unknowns because we needed to understand more about the product, more about the market in order to expand there. And I believe we would have never done that had we not taken that step. Fenton and Larkon, my 2 sons, are involved in everything that we do with the business, because at the end of the day it’s a business for children at that profile age. So there’s no point in adults making decisions for the children when at the end of the day they’ll be the ones who will drive the sales.”

Host: “What do you like about BubbleBum?”

Child: “I like the way it’s designed, the way it’s portable and inflatable.”

Child: “I like BubbleBum, Because of the name. It’s called BubbleBum”

Host: “Grainne, did you plan from the very beginning to sell thousands and thousands of BubbleBum all over the world?”

Grainne: “In June of 2009 I took a note in my diary that BubbleBum will be a global brand.”

Host: “And it’s getting there?”

Grainne: “And it’s getting there.”