MELISSA WIRT Founder, Latched Mama LLC
FOUNDED 2014
HEADQUARTERS Midlothian, Va.
PRE-CORONAVIRUS EMPLOYEES 30
EMPLOYEES NOW 32 (only 15 per shift)
Y o Y REVENUE +30%
PPP LOAN $148,000
PPP RAN OUT June

Melissa Wirt thought she knew about juggling responsibilities. She founded Latched Mama to provide affordable, functional clothing for nursing mothers six years ago, when she had just two children. Today she’s the mother of five.

Then in February, the coronavirus shut down the factories of some of Latched Mama’s suppliers in China. It took a few more weeks before it hit her team—most of them working mothers—in Virginia. “So many moms’ lives, within a 24-hour period, were turned upside down,” she recalls. “Kids stopped going to school on a Friday and didn’t go back on a Monday.”

Wirt’s mother came up from Florida to help take care of her kids. Another mom couldn’t come to the office anymore when school and day care closed. “So her husband is now coming into work” and is on Latched Mama’s payroll, Wirt says, and the woman is doing social media work for the company from home.

In other ways, the work-from-home lifestyle proved a boon to Latched Mama’s business. Women are treating themselves to more comfortable clothes, boosting sales from last year, Wirt says.

Her staff, many at home or working half-shifts, weren’t able to pack and ship fast enough to meet the elevated demand. One of her employees got Covid-19 during the summer, and fear of the virus remained high.

So Wirt recruited teenagers, including a 16-year-old neighbor, to work part time. She also hired two people to manage shipments and warehousing, scooping them up from a nearby distribution company that went bust during the pandemic. “In some ways it’s an amazing problem to have,” Wirt says. “But it’s also hard as a small business because you also have to keep your employees safe. It’s just a lot of balls in the air at the same time.”

In late July, ahead of World Breastfeeding Week—the company’s busiest time of the year—Wirt was working an early-morning shift at her warehouse when she got a text from her husband about Lilly, the family’s new goldendoodle puppy, and Ginger the guinea pig: “Lilly got Ginger.”

Wirt quickly pivoted from work to family: “I was trying to navigate it all from here because I couldn’t really leave.”

Productivity has ticked down. But Wirt says she feels that’s a small sacrifice in an unprecedented year.

“If we need to cut some profit to be able to make sure that people can relax and take a deep breath and be there for their kids and get through this pandemic together, then that’s what we’re going to do.”