Helium 10 Powers Years of Category Leadership

About Snooze Shade

Snooze Shade created a product that didn’t exist in 2008. Founder Cara needed a blackout shade for her baby’s stroller that could protect from wind, chill, and sun without the hassle of blankets falling off or coats getting run over by wheels. She invented the solution herself, launched at a trade show in 2009 with a prototype, and secured orders before FBA even existed. 

What started as one frustrated parent’s problem-solving project became the category leader in baby stroller accessories. The brand has held the #1 position in its category on Amazon UK for 15 consecutive years, maintaining consistent annual growth of 8-10% and reaching nearly £3 million in peak revenue across multiple international markets. The product has been used by members of the royal family and built such a loyal following that some customers transformed from critics to the brand’s biggest advocates. 

The company operates as a lean, family-run business. Cara manages the brand with help from her daughter and partner, plus a small team of freelancers handling customer service, social media, and logistics. Snooze Shade’s strength lies in product quality and safety—competitors can only compete on price. They cannot match the safety standards, quality, or unique design that has kept Snooze Shade at the top for over a decade. 

The product has been used by members of the royal family and built such a loyal following that some customers transformed from critics to the brand’s biggest advocates. 

Challenge

Snooze Shade faced critical challenges that threatened both growth and sustainability. The biggest obstacle was managing international expansion with a tiny team. The same product requires completely different keywords in different markets. What Americans call a “pack and play,” Australians call a “porticot,” and UK customers call a “travel cot.” Getting these nuances wrong meant missing customers entirely and wasting advertising spend.

Manual keyword research consumed massive amounts of time. Cara spent numerous hours creating “pages and pages and pages of spreadsheets” trying to organize data. For a family-run business, this time drain directly competed with product development, customer service, and family priorities.

Competition added another layer of complexity. At peak, 37 third-party resellers created chaos on Amazon with inconsistent branding and random product images. The US market became overrun with 40-50 sellers competing on price. Cara needed clear visibility into when to fight for market share and when to strategically retreat. After pulling out of the US and Canada due to unsustainable competition, relaunching required careful data-driven decisions about which products to test, which keywords to target, and how to minimize financial risk.

Solution

Snooze Shade uses Helium 10’s Market Tracker to receive regular reports tracking competitor movements, review counts, and market dynamics. When the US showed competitors dropping from 40-50 down to 12-13, she knew the moment was right to re-enter. This visibility gave her confidence to test the market again with limited initial investment.

For international expansion, Helium 10’s keyword organization transformed how Snooze Shade operates across markets. She identifies local competitors in each target market, validates their terms, then optimizes listings for pack and play (US), porticot (Australia), or travel cot (UK). All within Helium 10.

Helium 10 helped the team replace pages of manual spreadsheets. “I used to have pages and pages and pages of spreadsheets and be sitting there and my brain sorting and all the rest of it. Now you can just go ‘sort this out for me,’” she explains. Helium 10 also reveals what keywords people who buy her products are searching for, exposing completely unrelated terms that open new customer acquisition paths.

“In terms of time, it has saved me huge amounts of time,” Cara says. Those hours now fund product development, new product launches for the special needs market while maintaining 8-10% annual growth.

Results

Ten plus years at #1 in the UK category, with 8-10% annual growth maintained by a tiny team. After strategic exits from oversaturated markets, Snooze Shade relaunched in the US and hit #5 ranking, now operating profitably across three countries. 

“I have spent numerous hours researching keywords. Helium 10 has saved me huge amounts of time,”

Cara Sayer, Chief Sleep Officer at Snooze Shade

Those hours now fund product development and family priorities instead of manual research. The business generates more than a corporate salary, funds Cara’s pension, employs family members, and provides flexibility for life’s important moments. Data-driven efficiency proves eCommerce success doesn’t require sacrificing quality of life.