Of all the talents working parents have to master, juggling tops the list. Then again, that necessity can be the mother of creative life planning.
Case in point: Britt Riley’s The Haven Collection Inc., a combination of a licensed day care, shared workspace and a fitness facility.
Riley had a 1-year-old and a newborn while also holding down a marketing job.
“I couldn’t understand how people make it work,” she said. “I wanted to be a great parent without giving up my 10-year career. I wanted my kids to see their mom working.”
Riley grew up in Portsmouth, the daughter of entrepreneurial parents. Her dad was an artistic sign painter; many examples still decorate businesses around Newport, fashioned with elaborate script and accented in gold leaf.
“It was fun to watch him do it. I used to sneak into his workshop,” she said. “I saw what it takes to hustle and to be a great parent.”
Her mother handled the numbers side.
“You learn a lot from people who have that home and business balance,” she said.
Riley headed off to Endicott College, where she got a bachelor’s degree in business administration and marketing. During her senior year, she spent a semester in the marketing department at Patagonia Inc. The California company is known for its family-friendly policies. Years later, Riley incorporated that approach into her business model.
After graduation, she stayed at Patagonia as a marketing coordinator, where she was part of a team that worked on five-year business plans.
Eventually, she returned to Rhode Island to work as a marketing manager, then headed to Florida, where she met her husband. After two more years down south, she and her young family finally returned to Rhode Island for good in 2016.
“I felt the pull,” Riley said.
She also felt the pull of trying to be a good parent and a successful career person.
“I couldn’t stop thinking about it,” she said. “I had a thousand ideas. I knew for sure there was nothing in Rhode Island that answered the pain point I was experiencing.”
In addressing her needs, she talked to everyone she knew, asking how they were handling jobs and family.
“We were all struggling and there wasn’t a solution for parents who were working super hard,” she said. “I realized there wasn’t that support and it emboldened me.”
She wrote a business plan and talked to investors, whittling down her ideas to its core elements.
“I can’t count the number of people who said, ‘This is a great idea. Build one and then we’ll invest.’ It was a chicken and egg thing, but I couldn’t give up,” Riley said.
It took Riley two years to come up with her business plan. It featured a combined space offering high-quality child care for infants through pre-kindergarten and a shared workplace for parents. In addition, it had a workout area with equipment such as exercise bikes, treadmills and weights.
She needed a location that would prove her concept was workable, and she also needed that all-important ingredient: funding.
The financing still hadn’t fallen into place when she was a week away from taking a full-time job. But that same week, she found a smallish property she knew would be ideal, a former Montessori school, where everything, down to the toilets, was kid-size.
“I brought in my longtime colleague, Morgan Everson, and told her my idea. I didn’t know it then, but she was pregnant. So it resonated with her. She said, ‘I want to be part of whatever you’re working on.’ Morgan contributed towards the first $3.5 million in capital raising for our first location. We called it the Coggeshall Club, and it took off. People would say this is too good to be true, but the universe plays a giant part in what we all do,” Riley said.
When Riley opened the first club location in 2019 in Middletown, it was just after the second birthday of her daughter Zoe.
“She spent three years at our first club,” Riley said. “It was the best years of my life, watching our daughters grow into little girls.”
When the COVID-19 pandemic arrived, the facility closed for three months.
“It gave us time to reflect,” she said. “We used it to refine our concept, we brought in our first big investor and identified a second location.”
Since then, Riley has raised nearly $20 million to expand the business.
“We’ve been fortunate,” she said. “It took tenacity and persistence. I’m not giving up. We’ve had two rounds of funding. The pre-seed was $3.5 million and by the second, with a board of directors, we decided on franchising. Since then, we’ve awarded our first franchise.”
Today, there are three locations in Rhode Island and one in New Jersey, serving hundreds of families, all with waiting lists.
