When Suzanne Solsona’s son Rio was starting to walk, he needed some outdoor boots.
But the only pair of regular rubber boots she could find were too big.
“He kept literally doing face-plants into the puddles because he couldn’t walk very well in these boots. They were just too big and heavy for him,” recalls Solsona.
Transplanted from Vancouver to California at the time for her husband’s job, Solsona notes there wasn’t a real rain problem in the area thanks to a drought, but she still saw the need for something different in children’s boots.
So she and her husband came up with the idea for a new type of boot they called Muddy Munchkins. They hired a designer and a seamstress and developed a prototype, and the idea grew from there. That was about four years ago.
Today, the couple lives in Blueridge and their company MyMayu sells the original Muddy Munchkins boot, as well as larger sizes for older kids, online at mymayu.ca, in retail stores on the North Shore and across Canada, and at some online retailers in Europe.
Solsona explains that the product is a boot and is not meant to be an overshoe. The design is lightweight and the sole is flexible. There is no heel to trip up little feet, and the gator-type top of the boot is knee-length and cinches with an elastic. Another elastic at the ankle helps to secure the boot. Traditional rubber boots tend to fall off or flop around when kids are playing, notes Solsona.
“They’re having to use their feet in ways just to keep the boot on rather than navigating the trail and stuff,” she says.
A waterproof rubber sole and seam-sealed upper help keep the water out and Solsona says the boot is “trans-seasonal” and works in colder temperatures and snow with the addition of an optional fleece liner. In April of last year, Solsona and her family appeared on the TV show Dragon’s Den with the Muddy Munchkins boot.
“It was really exciting,” she says of being on the show.
The segment they taped didn’t air until about 11 months later, and Solsona says a lot happened during that time in terms of changes to the product line and growth of the company.
During the taping they were offered and accepted a deal from one of the “dragons,” but the deal didn’t go through after the show.
Solsona, who practised law in Vancouver for eight years before moving to California and then to Blueridge, says the transition from lawyer to mom to entrepreneur has been an interesting change. Her husband works full time in the special effects industry so she handles most of the day-to-day company business but says they are still a team and often work on their products long after the kids are in bed each night.
“It’s pretty exciting, I really enjoy it,” says Solsona. “I really enjoy the challenge because it’s different every day.”
