Press
May 2007
Star Tribune – Wednesday, May 9 2007
*Imagine having a new baby and starting a business at the same time. Can there possibly be enough hours in the day?
For Stacey Schneider and her new business, NewMom, Inc., every day is Mothers’ Day.
NewMom drops off “welcome kits” on dozens of new mothers’ doorsteps each week – quietly.
This is one business that’s attuned to its customers’ needs. Schneider knows the last thing any new moms wants is for someone to show up unannounced and wake up her sleeping baby. Or the napping mom, for that matter.
But new mothers do welcome helpful suggestions on where to buy baby clothes and toys, ro take baby on outings – or where to enjoy an occasional mommy break.
And that’s what NewMom stashes, along with sample products and toys, in each new mom’s welcome kit.
Schneider, who lives in St. Louis Park, came up with this idea during her own bleary-eyed days after she brought home her own first newborn in April 2004.
After 12 weeks of maternity leave, she returned to work part-time as a staff manager at an IT firm. She soon concluded that there had to be a better way.
“I went back to work and thought, ‘I have a baby at home that whines less than you do,’ I wanted to do something else.”
Recalling how overwhelmed a new mother could feel, she saw an opportunity to provide a service to new moms – in the form of information on products and services for their babies – as well as to local businesses that wanted to reach new families.
Now, Schneider buys a list of new mothers from a service each month and develops a delivery list in selected zips codes in the western suburbs.
She sells the opportunity to be included in the welcome kits to local enterprises that want to reach local mothers.
The Minnesota Zoo, for instance, includes a sippy cup with its name on the side. A local toy store contributes a rattle with a coupon. Other businesses advertise everything from food to facials, most making their pitch with a gift coupled with coupons or gift certificates.
“The coupons were really nice,” said one mom, Kim Grant of Eden Prairie, who found a NewMom kit on her doorstep a couple of weeks after her son Alexander was born last fall.
“I was napping and they don’t knock.” (“I would not want my doorbell rung with a newborn,” Grant acknowledged.) “It was just sitting there when I came down, very nicely wrapped and presented.”
Grant said she used some of the coupons and discovered some stores in the process.
Schneider delivered her first batch of welcome kits in February 2005 – each contained seven or eight products, most of which she had to buy in the beginning. She had only one paying customer that first month, and she delivered the kits to 18 moms in St. Louis Park and Edina.
Now she’s up to about 25 paying sponsors and 350 welcome kits per month – and growing.
Each advertiser pays $1.50 to $2.00 kit to have a gift product and coupon included, and it’s all packed and wrapped in cellophane by Opportunity Partners’ Asplin Center in Plymouth.
Through April, NewMom, Inc. had delivered about 3,000 welcome kits to mothers of newborns living in St. Louis Park, Maple Grove, Eden Prairie, Chanhassen, Minnetonka, Hopkins, Shorewood, Excelsior, Champlin, Brooklyn Park, Edina and Minneapolis. Schneider is looking to expand by summer into the south-metor communities of Lakeville, Burnsville, Savage and Prior Lake, and she eventually plans to head east to Stillwater and Woodbury.
The company, which she and her husband started with $12,000 capital, is grossing about $7,000 a month now.
Pretty solid growth for a mom who’s found a way to stay at home with the kids – mostly – and build a business at the same time.
She gets to spend a lot of time with her children and run her own business. “It’s kind of been integrated into our lives,” Schneider said.
“As my 3-year-old says, ‘We do business today, Mom?’”