In 2017, we were pregnant for the first time.
We were so excited that we started designing play mats. Not because we were entrepreneurs looking for a market gap, but because we were parents-to-be who couldn't find anything beautiful enough for the home we were building for our baby. Everything on the market was a colourful foam puzzle or a plasticky gym mat. Nothing that looked like it belonged in a thoughtfully designed home.
So we designed our own. A foam play mat that looked like a designer rug. Double-sided. Non-toxic. Beautiful enough to leave out.
We never got to use them.
We lost that pregnancy at 19 weeks.
Over the next few years, we lost three more.
We don't share this for sympathy; we share it because it's true, and because we know we are not alone. Infertility and pregnancy loss are carried quietly by so many families. We carried ours quietly, too, while the play mat designs sat waiting in a folder on a computer.
In 2020, we finally brought our beautiful baby boy into the world, a baby we had fought so hard and so long for that we hadn't purchased a single thing before he arrived. The trauma of loss had made hope feel too dangerous.
After he arrived, we bought a simple grey play mat with white dots. It was fine. But our home still looked like a baby had taken over, not the warm, considered space we'd always imagined.
Eight days after our son was born, my husband, a helicopter pilot, lost his job. COVID had grounded everything.
We were scared. We were exhausted. We were completely in love with this baby we'd waited years for. And we were staring down a financial cliff.
So we dusted off the 2017 designs and launched Rugabub.
Our Baby boy on the first play Mat that we designed in 2017.
What happened next still takes our breath away.
We became the fastest-growing play mat company in Australia. Parents felt exactly what we had felt, that they deserved something beautiful, safe, and thoughtfully made. That a play mat didn't have to be an eyesore. That non-toxic and gorgeous weren't mutually exclusive.
We won the Good Design Award Australia, one of the most prestigious design recognitions in the country. We won Bronze at the AusMumpreneur Awards as Emerging AusMumpreneur of the Year (Major category). In 2023, we won the Clean & Conscious Awards, both GOLD and Editor's Choice, becoming the only TPU play mat company in Australia to ever win GOLD. Just over 100,000 play mats have now been sold worldwide.
We were approached by companies that wanted to acquire us. We said no, because every offer came with conditions we couldn't accept. They wanted to raise prices or cut quality. We'd built Rugabub specifically so that parents like us, parents who'd waited and hoped and lost and finally arrived, could afford something truly beautiful for their children.
It's also why we don't wholesale our play mats. Wholesalers wanted margins we simply don't make ourselves. We'd rather sell direct and keep the quality real and the price fair.
Rugabub pioneered the rug-style play mat category in Australia, and the ripple effect has been felt across the industry worldwide. The double-sided design, the designer aesthetic, we shaped how modern play mats look and what parents now expect from them. We consider that one of our proudest achievements. Every factory in the world knows who we are.
The years that followed were the hardest of our lives.
Six more miscarriages. Years of unsuccessful IVF. Printing shipping labels from hospital beds. Answering customer emails between appointments. Putting the business first, even when everything in our personal lives was falling apart.
And then, while we were in the middle of IVF, we were scammed.
A manufacturer disappeared with $130,000 worth of faulty stock, stock that was supposed to become the Rugaroo doll collection. We lost nearly everything we had built financially. We had to rebuild the entire business from scratch. The launch we'd planned for December 2023 was delayed by a full year.
We almost closed.
Rugaroo was born from something that happened years earlier, when my husband was posted to the Northern Territory as a helicopter pilot.
I rescued a joey found in the pouch of a deceased wallaby. I named him Ginger. I fed him every four hours. I carried him everywhere. I shared every adventure, he once ate my homework. At eight months old, Ginger returned to the wild. It was a bittersweet, beautiful moment that forever shaped me.
Every Rugaroo doll, every character, every story in the Rugaroo Wilds carries a piece of Ginger's spirit, his cheekiness, his curiosity, his deep connection to the Australian landscape.
We finally launched Rugaroo two weeks before Christmas 2024. By launch day, my family had just $200 left in our account.
Dazza the Tradie's toolbox accessory sold out in 47 minutes. Within weeks, $200 had become $200,000. Nearly a thousand dolls sold across Australia.
The Daily Telegraph called it one of the most remarkable small business comebacks they'd covered.
We are still here.
We have 30 Rugaroo characters planned. The world they live in is still being built, new animals, new accessories, new stories, new adventures. The grey nomads are coming. The wombats are coming. And a few more secrets...
We still design everything with the same intention we had in 2017, to make something beautiful, safe, and worthy of the children and families who choose it. We still keep our prices fair, even when it costs us. We still answer every email like it matters.
Because it does.
As we once told the Daily Telegraph: "It's more than just play. It's about connection, to family, to culture, to storytelling. Kids carry these kangaroos in pouch bags like little joeys. It's about emotion."
And: "We left the mats blank so kids could use their imagination. That's the soul of what we're doing, enriching play without limits."
Thank you for being part of this. Every single one of you.
~ Dana & the Rugabub family 🖤
