When Maia and Allan Haag received a personalized storybook for their newborn 15 years ago, they loved the sentiment, but realized that with their combined creative skills, they could produce a better product. Now they are the successful owners of I See Me! Inc., a producer of personalized children’s books and other products.—Zoe Gahan
Q&A
What’s your individual level of involvement in the business?
We are both involved in the development of each book, as much out of our passion for doing this than anything. I write some of our books, and Jennifer Dewing, an award-winning author writes many of them. Allan heads up quality control. But it takes a large team of people to develop and produce one of our personalized storybooks; we are only part of the equation.
How are your own children involved?
Our 15-year-old son reviews illustration sketches and catches things that the adult eye doesn’t. He noticed that the illustration in one of our Christmas titles included toys in the stockings, but it was supposed to be Christmas Eve before Santa had arrived. Our two younger children occasionally participate in photo shoots.
What’s the most rewarding part of running your own business?
We regularly hear from our customers that the child’s parents became teary-eyed upon receiving the book for their baby or young child. Parents spend a lot of time naming their child, so seeing the full name in print, in a beautifully illustrated story, is an emotional experience. We hear from parents that their child learned to spell their name (even their middle and last names) very quickly because the child loves their book and it is a nightly favorite.
How do you work to maintain balance in life?
We are constantly trying to balance the demands of running a company while being parents of three children, ages 15, 10 and six, so we made a flexible work environment that requires everyone to meet their responsibilities but at the same time gives them the ability to set their own schedules.
Can you give us an example of how your books are unique to each child?
Our books celebrate the child by featuring his or her in the story, by incorporating the child’s name into the illustrations themselves, and by describing how special the child is. For example, in My Very Own Pirate Tale, sea creatures spell out the full name of the child in rhyme, bring adjectives to describe why the boy or girl would make the perfect first mate of the pirate ship, and the story ends with the child being named the captain of the pirate ship.
What’s the future of I See Me! looking like?
In order to fulfill our mission of building self-esteem in children, we would like to get our books into the hands of as many children as possible. This means that we are working hard to increase the exposure of our brand into more households. We now sell personalized coloring books, puzzles, lunchboxes (with a chalkboard on the inside lid for parents to write a note to their child), and placemats.
