At age 20, Bridget Scanlan’s pancreas failed. She was attending a lecture at Massey when her phone blew up with calls from doctors. Being too scared to listen to the messages about her blood test results, she called her mum to pick her up. A type 1 diabetes diagnosis arrived shortly after.
“I had been to the doctor the day before because I woke up one morning and my eyesight was almost gone,” says Bridget, now 32, and an entrepreneur in diabetic kit design. “I couldn’t see more than a metre away.
“I was drinking lots of water, but I thought that was just because I was hot. I was tired and losing weight, but I was also exercising. It’s all explainable, but as a package, it meant diabetes was going on in the background.”
Bridget was “bewildered” to experience the overnight change from independently producing insulin to manually handling dozens of injections and finger pricks every day.
“The day that I was diagnosed, a specialist team came to my house and taught me how to inject myself,” she tells. “It was a lot to come to terms with.”
Bridget can laugh now when she recalls a lack of tact around her condition. “A lot of people would say, ‘Oh, but you look pretty good!'”
Twelve years down the track, Bridget has mastered her daily diabetic routine, despite making over “180 health-related decisions” every day.
“It’s 24/7,” she explains. “It doesn’t matter whether it’s Christmas or your birthday, you’ve still got to deal with diabetes.”
And you still have to take all of the equipment you need to deal with your diabetes with you. One thing Bridget and her partner JP Twaalfhoven discovered was an absence of fashionable yet functional diabetic gear.
With the KYT team (from left: JP, Ben and Tom)
Combining her background in design and entrepreneurship, Bridget dedicated herself to creating her and JP’s brand, KYT, which is pronounced kit, and stands for “keeping you together”.
“I loved going out and being social, but my huge bag filled with paraphernalia was becoming an issue,” says Bridget. “I was hiding myself in the bathroom to take out my equipment, otherwise it would be spilling out in public. It didn’t feel empowering.And I remember thinking, ‘Wouldn’t it be cool if someone did something about this?'”
In 2015, on a roadtrip with JP, the couple decided to give it a crack.
“The idea was to make space for the little things like blood testing kits and insulin pens,” she tells. “You wouldn’t even need to take the equipment out, you could just discreetly use it from the bag.
“There is a safety element there too – when you open the bag, you can see what is missing. It also prevents the gear from clunking around in your bag and breaking”.
The bag enables diabetics to take care of business in public.
Not only did Bridget consider efficiency, but it was essential to her that the bags were stylish as well. She chuckles as she recalls clubbing after her diagnosis, telling Woman’s Day about lugging her chunky tote bag to the dance floor.
“I felt nervous about it in clubs because I didn’t want anything to be taken. I used to put the bag in the middle of our dance circle and we would all dance around it!”
After talking to hundreds of people in the diabetes community on social media, Bridget realised she was not alone in this experience.
“There’s a lot of young people who don’t love taking their cumbersome bags out with them, so they opt not to. Our goal was to make bags that are contemporary and eliminate the excuse of not taking life-saving equipment out with them.”
Speaking with diabetics about their unique needs.
In 2018, KYT launched its first bag. Bridget radiates joy as she gushes about the range of impact, which wasn’t exclusive to young women.
“Customer interest from the community has ranged from people as young as seven and then people who are well into their 90s, plus every age in between.
“A lot of guys that I’ve talked to are truck drivers, who just want something small that can sit next to them, or builders who want a case that fits inside a toolbox. One guy said, ‘So long as I can chuck it in my leather jacket pocket when I drive my Harley-Davidson, I don’t care.’ I showed our smallest bag to him and he was like, ‘Yes, it fits!'”
Bridget says being a part of early-stage support for diabetics is what drives her ambition and she can’t wait to donate a portion of her new launch to well-deserving charities.
Even photo shoots have to stop for test time!
“Insulin access around the world is quite inequitable,” she says. “There are lots of developing countries where getting insulin into the countries is hard, let alone getting it to people who need it. The war in Ukraine is a good example.
“Our goal with the new bags is to continue donating a portion from every bag and to focus on charities that are bringing insulin to people who need it.”
You can now register for VIP pre-launch pricing at kytbags.com.
