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Mompreneurs, Part 2: Transforming Your Idea Into a Viable, Successful Product, by Dacia Napier, owner of Baby Potential

Read Part One here. 

So, I’ve assembled the team:

Texas Creative---website, general help. Allison---ideas, investment. Elizabeth---lawyer,investment. Jeannie---nanny, general help, sweat equity. 

All team members have contributions to make and all believe in the concept.That's key---get people or businesses who believe in your idea and who are supportive. Negativity is not helpful. 

That’s not to say that you need “yes” people. But you do need people who agree with your principles and values and who believe in your base concept. We all meet too many people in our lives who drag you down. I have come to believe that life is too short. We have to maximize our contribution and not waste time with small-minded, petty people. OK---enough soap box. Back to work!

So we had the idea---career patches on onesies and tees---that's really as far as we have gotten so far in this tale. Texas Creative fielded several freelance artists and I had my sister-in-law do some initial artwork too. We knew what we wanted: contemporary, vibrant, simple graphics to convey each selected career name without needing a lot of interpretation. So for rocket scientist we have a rocket ship emblem; for biologist we have a cute little collection of colorful cells---you get the idea. If you look at our web site, Baby Potential, you can see everything we created.

Once we got a couple of the ideas down, Texas Creative’s art team--lead by Josh Norman---took the concept and ran with it. Next we needed someone to screen-print our designs onto patches and then embroider the patches directly onto the onesies and t-shirts. Some questioned why we didn’t just screen-print directly onto the fabric. Why spend time and extra money embroidering the patches onto the onesies and tees? Well, it was part of our initial concept and we thought it looked better. Also, we could put the patches on any color background. 

We started with white onesies, but we always planned to add colored onesies and tees eventually. That’s another point---even though you may have a simple idea be sure to think it through, even into the future. Where can the idea take you? What is the furthest you can take it?  It doesn’t mean you have to go there, but it's a good idea to explore those options and see if you can incorporate some simple things into the project in the beginning that will allow you to progress without going backwards first. 

For us, we tried to keep things open. For our "lawyer" patch the design also allowed us to use similar careers on other onesies like, "judge," "supreme court justice," etc. Each patch could be used for several careers if the public interest existed. 

We had a hard time finding anyone who could handle both screen-printing and embroidery but eventually, we did---American Classic. We had them do our initial 12 patches and we got them down just right! Were we done? No! Our next step was to sell them and here's where we ran into another hurdle. We had no knowledge of how to begin our sales process.

Thankfully, I have a great friend who has been giving me advice all along. Ellen Cotton owns THE baby store in town, Sugarplum Dreams (check out their website too!). She took me to market in Dallas to see what I was up against: pricing, packaging, etc., everything we needed to know to compete against and learn from the big players. It was very daunting to say the least, but I saw and learned so much that it was a fabulous opportunity. I went on this trip before we'd gone through our final production so we didn’t have great samples to show, just concepts. I got some positive responses and made contacts for possible business. 

Another point: take whatever help you can get even though it may not be what you need at the time. I didn’t really need store contacts when I had a concept, but I sure did when I had final product. After we had product I contacted some of those market stores. No one picked us up at the time, but I got great feedback. 

They didn’t want all-white (which was all we had) and they said our price was too high. I really think the cost did us in. As a result of the production in the U.S. we had to increase the price. Also, with small runs of items, the price goes up. As you know the retailers have to have their margin and the store at market or sales people you use have to have their markup too and you still have to at least cover your cost! Add all those layers and boom, you have an expensive onesie that very few people want to buy even if the idea is great!

Still, we forged ahead. Ellen was wonderful and let us host an opening in her store. Allison’s sister, Lisa, also had a party at her house so we could show our product to our friends. That all went really well and we had some sales. But we really thought we could do more. In fact, I had always had my eye on Target. I thought our concept, colors, and contemporary design would fit right in with their stores.

Up next in Part Three, Juggling: Trying to Balance the Demands of Being a Wife, Mother, Doctor and Mompreneur all at once.

Mompreneurs, Part 1: The birth and nurturing of your business idea, by Dacia Napier, owner of Baby Potential

So, you have an idea. But usually you let your wild ideas go. Someone else has already done it, or you don’t have the time, or maybe it’s not good enough. You come up with multiple reasons to give up on it and all of them are valid. But once in a long while you have one idea, a gem of an idea, that you think might actually work. So what do you do? 

I asked myself that same question and it wasn’t even my idea initially. My aunt used to hand embroider onesies with the names of careers on the front. I thought it was such a good idea that I suggested she sell them. She wasn’t keen on the idea, so I asked her if I could take it on. OK. Honesty time here. This is usually where I stop with my grand ideas. The next day after inspiration strikes I forget about it or too many other things get in the way. Not this time. This time I went for it.

I figured I needed a website, someone to make the career patches, blank onesies, someone to embroider the patches to the onesies and then I'd go from there. I also thought this would be a great way to involve the community. What if we could teach underprivileged women to sew? They could sew the career patches onto the onesies from home and they wouldn’t need to find child care or leave their kids to go to work--two of the major difficulties facing underprivileged women with children who need to find work outside the home.

I started to see this as more of a cause. We could promote education and give back to educational programs! Sure, these were lofty goals, but back to the nuts and bolts. 

How do you actually take that idea--career onesies--and make it happen? I started searching on the Internet for blank onesies without tags. It's amazing what you can find. There are all different options available. Sometimes you have to try different search terms to get to all of the different options, but if you are reading this you're already a Google/Bing pro. 

Next I had to figure out how much to order and here is where I made a big mistake. I should have just bought a few onesies to conduct initial testing. But, because the price per onesie goes down when you purchase a higher quantity, I bought too many. But, mistakes will be made. And I've learned from mine.

Meanwhile I hired a great design agency, Texas Creative, to help me with a website. How did I find them? I asked people in the community to recommend talented designers. I also told these people my idea and they loved it! It's always good to bounce your ideas off of a lot of people you trust. Be careful who you share your ideas with, though. You don’t want them taking your clever idea now that you've finally got a good one. Texas Creative came up with an award winning logo! 

But before the logo was designed I needed a name for my product/company. I asked many people what we should name this fledgling idea and my nanny came up with Baby Potential and we ran with it. Are you seeing the theme here? I involved lots of smart, talented people to help me take my idea forward. In the beginning I wasn't a huge part of this--just the director and the person moving forward with the idea. I've had lots of help. 

Next I decided I needed some help with a business plan so I got my friend, Allison Zeller, to join me and then another friend, Elizabeth Boddy, wanted to help so she joined our project too! 

Up next in Part Two, Production: Transforming Your Idea Into a Viable, Successful Product.