I started Mingo Kids in 2014. Back then, I used to travel a lot to Sweden for work and would buy clothes there for my daughter, who was still a baby at the time. In the Netherlands, I often found the clothing too loud—I was looking for basics, which I could find in Sweden. However, when she turned two, I noticed it was becoming increasingly difficult to find those basics, even in Sweden. That’s when I decided, together with a colleague, to start our own brand focused on basic kids' clothing. It was an immediate hit. We grew rapidly in those early years.

Over time, the collection expanded: in the beginning it was mostly black and white, but now we introduce a new color palette each season. We initially did all our marketing via Instagram, as I noticed many mothers used it as a source of inspiration for various things.

From the very start, we had a webshop and quickly gained several retailers. Not long after launching, a retailer in Japan began buying from us—and the market there kept growing. Since last summer, that retailer has even opened a Mingo store in Japan and launched a dedicated website for Mingo. So we’re fairly international now, although the Netherlands remains our biggest market. We’ve also started focusing more on Germany recently and are already seeing promising results there.

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