Hegen founder Yvon Bock is transforming motherhood challenges into a Singaporean success story

The Sqround

If you were to walk around baby and mother stores today, you’d notice that one shape stands out amongst the generic baby bottles: Sqround™. The defining feature of Hegen’s innovative approach to baby feeding, these square-round bottles are designed to be extremely functional and adaptable to the changing needs of a growing child. While Hegen is known for this innovative design today, it was not always the case. In fact, Bock had to overcome multiple hurdles before officially launching her products. 

Bock explains that it took five years to develop the design of their Sqround bottle and over 200 failed prototypes and iterations to get to where they are today. “Everyone challenged our belief of developing a no-screw thread square-round bottle,” she says.

On top of being challenged by the rest of the industry, Bock found her design leaked at the prototyping stage. This led to the brand having to go back to the drawing board. “[We wanted to] see how we can make our design even simpler and more innovative,” she says. This experience taught her to protect themselves by building their Intellectual Property portfolio.

In 2015, she officially launched Hegen with its Express-Store-Feed Ecosystem that offered mothers practical, simple and effective solutions. In hopes of simplifying the process of expressing, storing and feeding breastmilk, this system revolves around their patented Press-to-Close, Twist-to-Open (PCTO) technology and their uniquely shaped Sqround bottles.

Bock’s hard work and persistence led her and her brand to where they are today. Below, the founder shares more about her experience as a working mum, lessons she has learnt over the years and what we can expect from Hegen next.

Read more: This startup is building self-cleaning lactation pods for mothers on the go

How did your experience as a breastfeeding mother influence the design and functionality of Hegen’s products?
Back when I was a working mum, I always had to bring over ten different products (with singular functions and purposes) to facilitate the whole cycle of expressing and storing in the office in order to prolong my breastfeeding journey. These products were not integrated and clunky—it was a hassle and I felt like I was going to an army camp with my bulky bag of breastfeeding equipment.

While analysing the pain points from my breastfeeding journey, I identified a strong need for convenience. These pain points inspired me to create an integrated, close system whereby the entire cycle of expressing, storing, and feeding can be facilitated seamlessly while protecting the integrity of mothers’ breast milk.

With all this in mind, we are proud to introduce Hegen’s Express-Store-Feed Ecosystem, a seamless solution for breastfeeding, protecting milk integrity with air-tight bottles and zero spillage, ensuring every drop counts.

Can you share some of the challenges you faced while balancing motherhood and entrepreneurship?
One challenge was wearing multiple hats and juggling time between work and family, which is a constant for a woman entrepreneur. However, I choose to view these additional roles as allowing me to demonstrate a level of tenacity and confidence when it comes to my ability to lead in all facets of life. With that clear in my mind, it guides me through how I should prioritise and plan ahead of time, to better balance each role that I have. 

How did the brand name come about?
Our name draws from part of an old German idiom ‘hegen und pflegen’, which means ‘to cherish and nurture with care’. It represents our belief in creating a positive impact and contribution to both our customers and the global industry as a whole in everything that we do.

What are your favourite products?
As the brain of Hegen, this is such a hard choice, but I think I would go with our newest product, the Hegen PCTO 450ml/15oz Lifestyle Bottle.

Over the years, we have had multiple requests from parents for a bigger bottle (our previous largest size was 330ml/11oz) that they can use for their older kids or carry it themselves. [Now] we finally with this! We coin it the Lifestyle Bottle as it is lightweight and designed to accompany you on all your adventures, fitting seamlessly into your lifestyle.

What is Hegen doing for sustainability?
Hegen constantly reflects our impact on the environment and actively incorporates our commitment to protecting our planet into our innovations through our pursuit of longevity, durability and eco-friendliness. 

Our products are always designed with multi-functionality in mind, so it has an extended product lifespan beyond its primary function. For instance, our feeding bottles can be used as drinking or storage bottles with the switch of the interchangeable lids. This reduces the amount of products required, cutting down on waste, clutter and resources consumed, contributing to a more sustainable future.

Other than our products, our factories use energy-saving machinery to reduce carbon emissions in the manufacturing process. We are also relooking at our packaging to explore sustainable packaging options. We also conduct a bottle trade-in programme to allow customers to trade in their bottles which we will send for recycling.

How has the industry changed over the years and how do you hope it would evolve in the upcoming years? 
As statistics have shown, birth rates around the world have dropped. However, this does not deter me from achieving my goal of empowering 100 million mothers. I want to be able to support them and journey with them on their parenthood journey from bump to baby and beyond.

This includes supporting them even during pregnancy with antenatal classes at Flegen (formerly known as HLC Hegen Lactation Centre) to handhold them and equip them with the knowledge as new parents on childbirth as well as how to care for their newborn. We also hope that as toddlers start weaning from milk to solids, we are also there for parents through our Hegen Mealtime Collection, which includes toddler cutlery that can be used even beyond their toddler years.

I hope that as an industry, we will be able to provide even more support for new parents and help them through the fourth trimester. With more support for parents, hopefully we are able to reverse the declining birth rates too!

How do you ensure that Hegen’s products remain innovative and meet the evolving needs of mothers and children?
Innovation always starts with the ‘why’. Why am I solving this problem? Innovation can also be beyond products, it can be services, education or any other intangible forms such as relationships and connections through community.

My mission is to empower 100 million mothers worldwide and the needs of mums extend beyond just products. For me, it’s about understanding the real needs of mothers. We listen to the pain points and desires of mums and take careful considerations during the design process. For instance, we started offering customisation and personalisation services for the Hegen bottles through Hegen by Me after hearing that customers are looking for a personalised experience.

What else can we expect from Hegen in the upcoming years?
We hope to continue to grow the community of motherhood. It has been my mission from day one to support and empower breastfeeding mothers. We also hope to create a more holistic Hegen experience and provide working mothers solutions that combine both form and function, enabling them to better balance their own career aspirations and style, alongside parental responsibilities.

Hegen is constantly evolving and enhancing the existing product line. Exciting launches are coming this year. We also have exciting plans to expand Flegen’s services to offer more holistic support to parents in six core areas, namely exercise, nutrition, mental wellness, sleep, positive social connectivity and postpartum recovery.  

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