If you live in St. Louis Park, Edina, Maple Grove, or Eden Prairie and recently had a baby, chances are you stepped out your front door one day and found a surprise.
No, not another delivery from the stork. It was a cellophane-wrapped basket stuffed with gifts, coupons, fliers, and tips from local merchants interested in getting an edge with a powerful purchasing group: middle- and upper-class mothers.
“It’s meant to be a present,” explains Stacey Schneider, owner and founder of New Mom, Inc., the Minneapolis start-up that distributes the baskets. “It’s a Welcome Wagon for new moms.”
In fact, the baskets are more than just presents. New Mom sells space in the baskets to merchants, who place gifts there in exchange for a chance to also place their marketing messages.
Schneider, formerly a staff manager for a St. Louis Park IT firm, was a new mom herself when she came up with the idea for her company. She figured that new parents don’t always know about products and services available for families. A “mom-centric” basket filled with information from local businesses could be a big help.
Schneider’s market research showed that no one else was doing anything similar. So she assembled a sample basket that she showed to family, friends, and marketing professionals she knew. Responses were encouraging. With the help of her husband, Schneider developed a Web site and began cold calling.
Since January 2004, when she officially started her business, Schneider has picked up 18 clients, including Green Mill restaurants, SimonDelivers, and Wells Fargo. Each pays between $1.50 and $2 per basket. Every few months, New Mom looks through the lists of births on the state’s vital statistics Web site, then picks between 50 and 100 households in selected zip codes to receive the baskets. Schneider accepts only products and services that she or members of her “mommy network” recommend.
One vendor who made the grade was Todd Kirkland, an Eden Prairie agent for American Family Insurance. In each basket, he includes a brochure and a congratulations letter (with his agency’s contact information) attached to a pair of baby socks. “It’s a unique marketing tool, it’s inexpensive, and it reaches a target market that I don’t have access to,” he says. “On a typical ‘mailing,’ I get two to three calls. That’s a very good response rate.”
Schneider turned a profit in her second year and expects revenues of $70,000 to $80,000 this year. Now she’s making plans to make her special deliveries in Chanhassen and Woodbury.
