When Taylor Capuano was unable to take her daughter to a swim class at 2 p.m. during the work day, she was faced with a dilemma familiar to many parents — particularly women.

After running the numbers on childcare costs, Taylor found she would only have $200 left each month. It seemed like there was no sustainable way to balance motherhood and career — that is, until she started her own business.

In 2022, Capuano launched Cakes Body alongside her twin sister Casey Sarai, both 32. The e-commerce brand offers seamless nipple covers that are designed to be grippy not sticky, catering to sensitive skin and a wide range of body types. After just three years of operation, Cakes has raked in over $100 million in revenue. The brand went viral on TikTok and in 2024, Taylor and Casey appeared on Shark Tank, where they received an investment from Good American co-founder Emma Grede.

Now, the company is re-investing into its employees. On May 1, Cakes announced that it would cover up to $36,000 for childcare coverage for the year for all full-time employees with children under 6 years old.

The initiative might seem like groundbreaking, but for Capuano and Sarai, it was a no-brainer.

"Taylor and I both have had babies since we started Cakes so it's not like this distant memory where we don't remember the burden of childcare costs," Sarai tells PEOPLE. "We really felt that."

She continues, "We've always said, 'Our mission and what we're working towards is affordable childcare for everybody in the U.S., and this is what we can control at this time.' So we were like, 'Let's figure out how to make it work for our team.'"

20 percent of Cakes' 30 full-time employees have enrolled in the program, and Sarai says they plan to continue it as the company grows.

"We're definitely continuing and also just figuring out how do we scale this beyond just our company," she explains.

The response to the initiative has been overwhelming (the brand's TiKTok announcing it has racked up nearly half a million views), but not unexpected given the ubiquity of the childcare crisis. Per the Boston Consulting Group, only 12 percent of all workers in the U.S. have access to childcare benefits through their employer.

"Hearing of the stories of people, mainly women, having to leave the workforce when they didn't want to because they just couldn't afford childcare and how that really took them off track for what they wanted for their own careers was just really touching," she says, adding that she loves feeling that she has "taken this burden off of our team."

She continues, "Maybe you couldn't afford the childcare you wanted, so you're always worried about if your kid okay. Or you're worried about the financial burden. Just knowing your kid is okay allows you to focus on work."

The numbers don't lie. Recent research from Boston Consulting Group finds that childcare benefits deliver returns of up to 425 percent of their cost for companies across the U.S.

Another benefit of Cakes' flexible work environment, Sarai says, is being able to draw on an "under-leveraged group" — stay-at-home moms looking to get back into the workforce.

"There's this woman on our team, she started as a customer," she continues. "We ended up hiring her to answer our customer service emails and now she oversees our team of 20 customer service representatives, and oversees our whole customer care department."

The employee, Sarai explains, has four kids and was a stay-at-home mom for 10 years.

"She could never have gone to a job where you needed to be in an office from 9:00 to 5:00, nor would a job probably have allowed her the flexibility that she needs," she says. "And I'm sorry, someone with four kids, they have the most transferable skills in prioritizing, being efficient, being able to plan and delegate, and all of those things that are skills you learn as a mom of four."