The Changes to Ryla

Many of you have been asking why we changed the name from Vauva to Ryla and what the difference between the bags are. I'm here to answer all of those questions for you. Let me start with a little background about Vauva. The name means "baby" in Finnish, which happens to be Kelsie (the co-founder's) background. We love the name and thought it was perfect for a diaper bag company. Let's just say we got continuous backlash on the name and how we should change it to something more memorable. We did a lot of focus groups and the feedback we consistently got was no one could pronounce it correctly and no one could remember it. From a marketing standpoint, that was not good. 

After getting continuous negative feedback about the name, we knew something had to be done. We sent out a survey to find the best name and came up with things like Luxed and Sawder. Names that were interesting, but not relevant to a baby company nor something that we loved. One day, Jeremy (the other co-founder) was thinking about the things that are the most important to us, and instantly thought of our kids. Kelsie and Jeremy have a little boy named Ryder and I have a little girl named Mila. Put those two names together and you get Ryla. 

Now the Vauva bag was a huge hit. It sold out fast and we got crazy positive feedback. We knew we had an awesome product on our hands, but we knew there was always room to improve too. All of our improvements came from YOU, our amazing customers. One of our core values as a company is to always be learning. We know that we can be always learning from those we interact with. With this value in mind, we continually seek feedback on our product to make it better. We've done many focus groups, hour-long phone calls (which we compensated greatly for) and interviews, which led to these changes. So here are the main changes you guys came up with from the Vauva to the Ryla bag.

Outside Pockets
The Vauva bag had tightly sewn pockets that allowed you to put your phone, small baby toys, and even skinny baby bottles in. Now as moms, we always have a water bottle on us and it needs to be easily accessible. We knew we could improve those outside pockets by putting elastic on one side so it expands more so you can put your water bottle in. This elastic makes it much easier to put things in the pockets but still, makes sure the pocket lays flat on the bag when it's empty. This has to be our favorite new feature of the Ryla bag.

Sturdier Material
The Vauva bag was known for maintaining its form and holding its shape no matter how old or used it was. I don't know about you, but we don't like saggy diaper bags! We found a way to make the Ryla bag hold its shape even better by adding a sturdier material to the top of the bag and the flap. This makes it so the bag doesn't cave in while wearing it. Set it down and the bag stands up, hang it up and the bag doesn't sag down. We made sure your Ryla bag looks good no matter how you're taking care of it. 

Zippers & Inside Pockets
This may not seem like a big deal to you, but it is a big deal to us! We managed to upgrade our zippers from the old leather pullers to YKK gold zippers with our logo engraved on it, the best zippers on the market! It's the little details that count and we wanted to push the bag from great to perfect! We also made both bottle pockets on the inside insulated to keep all your food and drinks warm or cold. The binky pocket and miscellaneous pocket are deeper too, so you can store more things. 

Logo
We asked for your help for this one because we could not decide. The old Vauva bag had the name Vauva on the front in gold lettering on a patch with 4 studs around it. We wanted to change it up for this bag so we had two prototypes. 1. The patch on the outside with the name Ryla stitched on both in the same color as the bag with a beautiful gold plate with the name and logo engraved on it on the inside above the zipper pocket. 2. The patch on the inside above the zippered pocket engraved with Ryla and the gold plate on the outside. We surprisingly got an equal amount of likes for both. We couldn't offer both options so in the end, we picked the patch on the outside and the gold plate on the inside. Either way, this added more dynamic and finishing touches to the bag making it look even more classy.

We are so excited and proud of the new name and bag we have created, just for you mom hustlers out there. A mom hustler is a mom who makes it happen. Who gets that motherhood and having a job is possible. We love making it easier for you moms who already have enough to worry about. Whether it's getting your kids to the park or maintaining your business we are here to help and support you throughout your journey. You can count on us to always be improving our bags. If you have any feedback or would love be apart of our design process join our Facebook group Ryla Insiders. You can help be apart of our journey to create the world's best diaper bag for the world's best mom hustlers! 

With Love,

The Ryla Team