$250K Failure Almost Killed Our Baby Wipes Brand

What we talked about.

Suan, founder of Nikki's Natural Wipes, joins Sunny Ray to share how a family medical crisis turned into a global baby care brand. Raised in a Sri Lankan immigrant family in the UK, Suan built a career in IT and software, working at SAP and IBM, before his 20 day old son Nikki was hospitalized with a skin infection traced back to chemical laden wipes. That trauma pushed Suan and his wife, an osteopath, to develop natural wipe formulas at home, eventually spending two years in R and D before launching Nikki's in 2019. The business faced brutal setbacks, including a quarter million dollar failed production run in China, a 13 month COVID shipping delay that burned 50k a month, and nearly 200k in tariff costs that nearly killed the company right as it approached profitability. Suan also founded Hive, an outsourcing company supporting startups, and is now building AI agents for customer service and order processing plus a new app, Nikki's Active, to help parents find children's activities. Nikki's has sold over a million packs worldwide.

A father's midnight ER scare with his newborn son sparked a natural wipes brand that survived a $250K production failure, COVID, and tariffs.

The questions, and the answers.

Tell us about Nikki's Natural Wipes and what you guys are doing.

I started the business about 7 years ago. My background is IT and software, it was never my desire to make baby wipes. Our first son got sick and was hospitalized because the wipes we used affected his sensitive skin and got infected. We started making wipes and creams at home just to fix our own child's problem, and it grew from there into a business we officially launched in November 2019.

Let's go back to when you were a kid. Where did you grow up and what was the household like?

I was born in Sri Lanka but grew up in the UK, we left due to civil war. My parents weren't highly educated but were workers, they had a restaurant and a petrol station. At 10 years old we were in the restaurant cutting onions and chicken. It's a typical immigrant family, always busy, always working, and that instilled a hustle mentality in all of us.

Walk me through your first real job. What did it teach you?

My first real job was McDonald's at 16. The manager gave me a cloth and told me to clean the bins, and I refused, saying that wasn't my job. I told my dad I wasn't going back, and he gave me a beating and said I was going back. That humbled me a lot. McDonald's gave me structure and process, and I progressed quickly, managing a branch by 17.

Take us back to that night your son Nikki ended up in the hospital. What was going through your head?

Around midnight his temperature spiked and he was screaming. We rushed him to a children's hospital and doctors gave us worst case scenarios like organ or brain failure. The hardest part was the spinal tap, they couldn't give him painkillers, only sugar syrup, and it took three tries. Seeing that as a first time parent was traumatizing and it was the turning point that made me say I need to do something.

You spent over two years testing formulas. What kept you going through all of that?

I felt there was nothing like it in the market and I genuinely loved the research, which surprised me since I struggled with reading. We tried beeswax, then honey, dealing with issues like oil separating from water in the formula. Every obstacle felt solvable, and my wife, who has a science background as an osteopath, validated my research and helped push us through.

What does Nikki's look like today and where is the growth coming from?

We've sold over a million packs globally in seven years. Before launch we lost a quarter million dollars on a failed production run in China. Then COVID hit and stock got stuck on boats for 13 months while we burned 50k a month. Last year tariffs cost us nearly 200k right as we were about to turn profitable. Now we're expanding into the UK, US and Canada and growing strong.

If you sat across from a younger version of yourself, what would you tell him?

I'd say if you ever start your own business, raise a lot of money beforehand, because you don't know what's coming. I was young, naive, and financially comfortable so I thought I could do it safely, but I didn't foresee COVID or the other obstacles. I also ended up founding Hive, an outsourcing company in the Philippines, because I couldn't find flexible resources built for startups.

Where does AI fit into how you run the company in the next two years?

We've already started building AI agents for orders and some ad creation. Now we're building custom agents for customer concerns, like answering whether honey in the wipes is safe for babies under 12 months. We're also integrating AI agents to process our Amazon and Walmart orders, linking into our Shopify stores, so the manual tasks my team used to handle can be automated.