How one mum turned a painful breastfeeding experience into a new product category

Six years ago, Elysia Krstevski found herself in the thick of new motherhood. She’d braced herself for the sleepless nights and endless nappy changes, but nothing prepared her for how difficult feeding her baby would become. One day, during the pandemic, everything came to a head. While doing the grocery shopping, Elysia was battling mastitis and desperately trying to find somewhere to warm expressed breastmilk for her hungry baby. Every parents’ room was closed and there wasn’t a microwave in sight. “In utter desperation, I ran to the car with my screaming baby and breastfed through excruciating pain. It was horrendous,” she recalls. Afterwards, she started looking for a solution. “I thought there had to be something out there that would allow me to warm my baby’s milk anywhere, safely and quickly. There was nothing.” That frustrating experience planted the seed for what would become Meke Baby. At the time, Elysia was juggling life with two young children while working as CEO of a performing arts company. In 2023, she launched the Meke Baby Portable Milk Warmer, convinced parents deserved a safer and more practical way to feed their babies on the go. The response was immediate. The portable warmer has sold out seven times and Meke Baby has now fulfilled more than 20,000 orders. “When I launched Meke Baby, I wasn’t thinking about retail,” Elysia says. “My focus was proving that the problem was real and that parents were looking for a better solution. We started online, listened obsessively to our customers and built a community around the brand.” As demand grew, so did the product range. In 2025, while in labour with her third child, Elysia launched the Meke Go-Box, a cordless lunchbox warmer. The business now also produces the Express Milk Warmer 2.0, the Express Formula PRO Milk Warmer and the Twist Bottle. This month marks another major milestone, with Meke Baby launching nationally through Baby Bunting. Getting Australia’s largest baby retailer on board wasn’t straightforward. “When we first approached Baby Bunting, there was very little category data available,” Elysia says. “We weren’t entering an established category with years of sales history behind it. We were effectively asking Australia’s largest baby retailer to back a completely new way of feeding on the go.” She still has the video from three years ago when she drove to Baby Bunting’s Dandenong headquarters to personally deliver product samples. “The journey has been three years in the making,” she says. The launch coincides with a rebrand for Meke Baby, positioning the company as more than a feeding products business. Instead, it’s focused on solving practical parenting challenges through thoughtful product design. “To see where we are today is incredibly rewarding. It validates not only the product, but the belief that parents were ready for a new standard,” she says. “For us, it’s not just about shelf space. It’s about helping establish a new category and making innovative feeding solutions more accessible to families across the country.” While bricks-and-mortar retail is a significant step, online sales continue to drive the business. Australia Post recently selected Meke Baby as the face of a national campaign highlighting successful Australian small businesses. The business has also benefited from growing awareness of the concerns around heating plastics. Emerging research has linked exposure to microplastics and chemicals released from plastics to a range of potential health impacts, prompting many parents to seek alternatives that don’t involve heating plastic containers. “The rebrand reflects our commitment to setting a new standard and building products that grow with families throughout different stages of childhood,” Elysia says. Industry recognition has also helped raise the company’s profile. Last year, Elysia was named one of the Inside Small Business Top 50 Small Business Leaders, before being recognised this year as one of Inside Retail’s Top 50 People in E-Commerce. “A number of Baby Bunting team members were also recognised through the awards, and it created an opportunity to put my name on the map and reconnect with people I had previously spoken to about the business,” she says. Elysia credits her background in the performing arts with shaping the way she approaches marketing. “Our recent Black Range campaign, featuring Adrian Portelli’s private jet, was conceived, produced and executed in just one week,” she says. “The objective remains the same: create something that sparks emotion, conversation and connection.” The campaign celebrating Meke Baby’s arrival in Baby Bunting stores stars Steph Ottavio from The Block alongside her family and was directed and produced by Elysia herself. “It’s a cinematic short film narrated by an 85-year-old great-grandmother that follows four generations of the same family,” she says. “We wanted to celebrate the generations before us while recognising that every generation has the opportunity to raise the standard and build upon what came before.” With Baby Bunting now stocking the range nationally, Elysia’s focus has shifted to international expansion and developing new products designed to make life a little easier for parents. 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