We’re aidie London, a multi award-winning British baby brand and proud ORB members!
Award updates
Since this article was originally published in July 2019, aidee London has achieved even more success and has been named one of the top 100 businesses in the UK, as a SmallBiz100 company.
We’ll be part of the national 100-day campaign, culminating in a visit to the House of Lords before Small Business Saturday this December. aidie london has already featured in Forbes as a result of the campaign, with more to come in the following weeks. Our assigned day is 12th October, during which we’ll be running promotions and giveaways.
This news follows on from two award wins in August, during which we were named ‘Most Trusted Baby Clothing & Products Company of the Year 2019’ at the SME Business Elite Awards & a prestigious Junior Design Award for ‘Best First Walker Collection’, which is yet to be announced.
We are thrilled to have achieved so much in the year since we launched and continue to be proud to be & support our fellow responsible businesses.
To please read on to find out more about aidee London and our earlier award successes.
In May 2019, 14 months after our launch, we were awarded the FSB Start-up Business of the Year Award at the annual Federation of Small Business’ Chairman’s Ball and Awards Ceremony in London, an event featuring appearances and speeches from Prime Minister Theresa May and Chancellor of the Exchequer Philip Hammond.
The week prior to this win, we had been contacted by the German Design Council in Frankfurt with the news that they had nominated us for a German Design Award 2020, for Excellent Product Design for our first walking shoes. This was completely unexpected but incredibly welcome news!
Why we joined ORB
Knowing that we wanted to help protect the environment our babies grow up in, we outlined our plan for environmental sustainability. The materials we use are organic and sustainably sourced and our packaging is either biodegradable or fully recyclable. We’re a plastic-free business with a dedication to environmental responsibility at our core. We joined ORB a few months after our launch, knowing it would help reinforce our stance on environmental sustainability and help our customers place trust in us during our first year. Since then, we’ve gone from strength to strength, featuring in high profile media including Tatler magazine and The Guardian. We’ve got some exciting things in the pipeline which we can’t share just yet but we’re very excited for the future of aidie London.
I think our story and the business successes we have enjoyed in these very early stages of our company’s growth emphasise ORB’s stance that Doing Good is Good for Business.
A series of awards in 14 months
The past 14 months have been eventful. In our first 12 months we were awarded three baby industry awards, voted for by parenting industry professionals as well as parents themselves, impartially testing our products via their babies. 6 months after we launched, we were named 2018’s Best Baby Footwear Brand in the Mumii Best Baby and Toddler Gear Awards, we went on to win two more baby awards in 2018 and in April 2019, were nominated for a staggering three FSB Awards. Later that month, we were awarded the London region’s Start-up Business of the Year Award, later going on to win the national award in May. On the same day, we were notified by Junior Magazine, a parenting publication, that they had short-listed our first walking shoes for a prestigious Junior Design Award in the Best First Walker Collection category for our first walking shoes.
The world’s only baby shoes designed by Psychologists
At aidie London, we specialise in first walking shoes for babies and toddlers. We make the world’s only baby shoes designed by Psychologists to support infant Cognitive function. Our footwear range is endorsed by leading London Podiatrists, meeting strict criteria outlined by the British College of Podiatry. Our first walkers enhance biofeedback, the critical neurological process required to take place during the early stages of learning to walk, allowing babies’ brains to form neural pathways from information gathered by the sensory receptors in the soles of babies’ feet.
Those first steps are more important than you realise
Biofeedback is critical for babies to learn to walk, form optimal development and only occurs when babies can feel the ground below as they walk. Walking barefoot is ideal because it enhances the role of sensory receptors in the babies’ feet to develop balance and coordination, in turn growing the region of the brain responsible for walking via a feedback loop. Traditional structured, rigid & hard sole shoes block the nerve endings in baby feet from gathering information from the ground below. This in turn, inhibits the biofeedback process, which is critical for babies’ brains to develop the region responsible for walking. ‘Hard’ baby shoes are also responsible for causing trauma to the developing ligaments, soft tissue and cartilage in delicate baby feet, resulting in the potential for lower back pain later in life, as well as ankle, leg and hip problems caused by displacement.
Babies are born without bones in their feet. Instead, their feet contain soft cartilage, like in our ears. The cartilage in baby feet is shaped like bone and over time will harden into bone (usually around age three, and continues until baby’s a teenager). However, if baby wears the wrong type of footwear, ie. structured, hard soled, or rigid shoes, it can force the cartilage-bones out of alignment, causing misshapen feet and toes which can cause a multitude of problems in later life when their feet bear all their body weight.
What most parents don’t realise is that a baby’s brain develops in synchronisation with other developmental advancements. Neurons (brain cells) are activated with every experience your baby has, good or bad. These early experiences essentially determine the make-up of your baby’s brain. Every new neuron that becomes activated (from taking a few steps, for example), triggers neural pathways to form in the brain. These neural pathways, called dendritic branches are like tree roots, branching connections between different, already activated neurons in baby’s brain. The more neurons that are activated, the more potential for further neurons to become activated. Babies are born with all the neurons they’ll ever have. The ones that haven’t been activated by age 7 will die off. If a baby learns to walk barefoot, or in footwear designed to mimic barefoot walking, his bran has greater potential for development in other regions due to dendritic branching.
As humans, we weren’t designed to wear shoes. We’ve evolved walking barefoot but modern society means it’s not hygienic or safe for a child to walk outside barefoot. So, our footwear bridges this gap. Our specialist range mimics barefoot walking and supports Cognitive function through biofeedback and neural development.
My name’s Seffie & I launched aidie London in March 2018. A few years earlier, when my son was a baby learning to walk, I realised there were no shoes that supported his early development. I could only find hard, structured shoes. With a background in Psychology, I incorporated my knowledge and set about designing a pair of shoes that would mimic barefoot walking and therefore enhance his opportunity for optimal development. That’s when aidie London was born.