Wonderbewbz began with a moment of heartbreak. After giving birth, Jolene Ruth Tan struggled with breastfeeding and worked extremely hard to build a small stash of breast milk. When she thawed it, her son refused to drink it. After all that painstaking effort, the rejection felt like a needle to the heart.
Instead of giving up, Jolene revisited a freeze-drying technology she had come across overseas and researched before. With some work, she turned her milk into powder, and this time her son accepted it. The relief and happiness she felt rekindled an entrepreneurial fire that had been waiting for the right idea.
Jolene had long wanted to create something meaningful of her own, but no business idea had ever felt meaningful enough. This one did. “I realised this solution had the potential to help many other mothers facing similar struggles,” she says. She saw a clear gap in Singapore for safe and reliable breast milk preservation, and she set out to fill it.
Following Her North Star
Building Wonderbewbz felt much like raising another child. In the early years, Jolene ran the business largely on her own and shouldered every responsibility. Raised by a “Tiger Mum”, she had learnt to be independent and to set high standards for herself. Those traits carried her through the early stages, yet they also meant she took on more than she could handle and judged herself harshly.
About a year and a half in, the weight of it all caught up with her. Her mind was crowded with tasks, a backlog of orders, and self-doubt about whether she could really do it. Caring for both her child and her business had drained her more than she realised, and for the first time, thoughts of shutting Wonderbewbz down began to creep in. Her North Star was starting to dim.
Then a client sent her a long WhatsApp message, thanking her for the difference Wonderbewbz had made in her life. The message arrived when Jolene needed it most, and it reminded her that her work was genuinely helping others. Her North Star began to shine again. She also learnt that sustainability applies to entrepreneurs as much as to businesses.
Messages like that one have kept Jolene steadfast ever since. For her, the goal has never been profit alone. It is the impact Wonderbewbz can have on mothers’ lives and the chance to make their motherhood journeys a little easier.
Raising the Business
To reach more mothers, Wonderbewbz had to grow, and Jolene knew she could not do it alone. Bringing in a dedicated lead for operations allowed her to begin scaling the business.
As the team grew, Jolene wanted its culture to reflect the belief that started the company. She captured its values in the acronym HEART: Honour Every Drop, Empathy First, Accountability, Raise the Standards, and Team Spirit. Every batch of milk the team handles was produced by a mother out of love for her child, and HEART is a daily reminder of that. It also sets the standard for how the team supports one another as the business expands.
The timing reflected a real need. Jolene noticed that many mothers started breastfeeding strongly but found it hard to sustain, particularly after returning to work. With more capacity, Wonderbewbz could offer more of them a practical way to keep going.
Building a New Category
As one of the first to build the breast milk freeze-drying category in Singapore, Wonderbewbz had no regulatory frameworks or established operating references to follow. Jolene had to research extensively and steer the company through the uncertainties facing a new business in a fledgling industry.
There was also the challenge of introducing an unfamiliar concept. Mothers were actively seeking more options, but freeze-drying was still unknown to many Singaporeans. Jolene made public education and consumer trust a priority, investing in social media content, customer engagement, and transparent communication rather than scaling too aggressively.
To Jolene, the effort is important because breast milk is a precious and finite resource. Reducing waste and extending its shelf life helps mothers breastfeed more sustainably within the realities of modern working life.
Growing Pains
Just like raising a child, growing a business is never straightforward. Even when things seem to be running smoothly, Jolene keeps reviewing processes, monitoring customer feedback, and evaluating long-term scalability. She grows in careful, incremental steps so that the company’s standards hold as its infrastructure expands.
Given the personal nature of the service, some customers arrive feeling stressed, anxious, or simply overwhelmed. Jolene’s approach is always empathy first: listen, understand the concern, and then solve the issue professionally.
She also knew she could not always be present, so she began training others to run Wonderbewbz without her constant involvement. That meant passing down not only technical processes and quality standards, but also how customers should be cared for. The result is a people-first culture that encourages learning and lets employees take ownership of their work.
Still Standing, Still Building
As Jolene looks ahead, her heart remains in the same place: helping as many mothers as possible make the most of their breast milk. In the long term, she hopes to work with hospitals, healthcare institutions, and other stakeholders to build a safer, more accessible ecosystem for breast milk preservation and breastfeeding support. One day, she would also like to help improve access to human milk nutrition for vulnerable children in crisis or resource-limited settings.
“We started by helping one mother at a time,” she says. “My hope is that what we learn from doing that well can eventually help us serve at a much greater scale.”
When it comes to legacy, Jolene hopes to be remembered less for what she built and more for who she was while building it: someone who led with heart, cared deeply, and made the most of what she was given.
Small Steps, Steady Progress
To Jolene, the spirit of enterprise is the courage to pursue meaningful ideas, solve real problems, and keep moving forward through rough seas.
“There is rarely a perfect time to pursue a business idea,” she says. Her advice is to begin with small, incremental steps, just as she did. “Sometimes, the breakthrough is simply continuing to build long enough for all the small steps to add up.” Wonderbewbz, she believes, is where it is today because she moved at her own pace and stayed consistent.
Website: https://wonderbewbz.com/
AUTHOR BIO
ALAN KOH
Alan Koh is the Founder and CEO of Impossible Marketing, a group of companies renowned for hyperlocal marketing strategies tailored to businesses in Singapore. His professional journey began in the banking sector, where he quickly rose through the ranks, garnering eight industry awards in just four years.
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