Fran Maier’s Post

Incredibly, last month, our first BabyQuip baby joined the team! At BQ, family is always the focus. As we work to support families through our services, we’re equally committed to the growing ones we have right here as part of our team. Welcome to the world, Van! Big congratulations to our Marketing Coordinator and new mom, Dylan Rodgers!

Seek two-way door decisions whenever possible. Amazon made the one-way vs. two-way framework popular, and now, it’s a staple of business management. Here’s a quick breakdown: One-way door decisions are difficult to reverse. Once you’re in, it’s hard to get out. In the business world, this may look like a system change or layoffs. Two-way door decisions are easier to roll back. If you make a mistake, you can readjust or backtrack without significant damage. Most decisions can be two-way doors if you look at them properly. I do everything in my power to maximize two-way door decisions in my personal and professional life. In fact, I recently took this framework a little too literally. Over the past few years, I have been living between San Francisco and Santa Fe. I enjoy San Francisco due to the ongoing innovation in the tech world and all the draws of an amazing coastal city. Plus, my sons are in the Bay Area. On the other hand, Santa Fe is my hometown and I absolutely love the Land of Enchantment, the culture, and the bustling art scene in Santa Fe. I was planning to sell my San Francisco house this winter until I realized that would be a one-way door decision. I have a great place with a magnificent city view that I would never be able to get back. So I pivoted. Instead of moving forward with the one-way door decision, I will now keep two doors open (pun intended). I’ll primarily live in Santa Fe and rent my San Francisco house out. Keep your options open. Why limit yourself to one door when you can have two? (And much gratitude for the ability to make this decision).

Increased complexity is a side effect of rapidly growing startups. BabyQuip’s growth over the past year has been incredible, but it has also demonstrated the need for a strong team with specialized skill sets. And that’s why we’re excited to bring on Sarah Cox as our new Controller! From the first interview, I could tell that Sarah was an innate problem solver. She is ready to roll up her sleeves to get to the root of problems and is committed to our long-term growth. Sarah's advanced skillset will help us address increasingly complex accounting questions. With her on the team, we can streamline our reporting and forecasting functions to take our company to the next level. Plus, she came as a referral from one of BabyQuip’s own Quality Providers! Welcome, Sarah - I’m thrilled to see what we accomplish together next!

BabyQuip is now in 22 countries. But the road to get there wasn’t smooth. Each country had its own unique challenges in launching. For instance, getting the same quality of product across different countries and cultures can be very difficult. In the States, our Quality Providers are typically stay-at-home moms or moms who work part-time. But middle-class moms in Mexico don’t usually make as much as middle-class moms in the U.S. That means our QPs in Mexico aren’t necessarily in a place to buy the expensive baby gear our customers want to use. So we’ve adjusted our model to account for those differences. We’ve refined our target audience to include corporate moms looking to invest and individuals in travel-related fields seeking additional revenue streams. We’ve also lowered entry fees, and are planning to implement better cross-border payment solutions to make it easier for international QPs to join the marketplace In doing so, we’ve been able to open our doors to anyone, from anywhere, as far away as South America or South Africa. Part of the satisfaction of running a business is learning to accommodate a range of clients. We take pride in customizing our services to fit their specific needs. As we enter our ninth year, I’m looking forward to launching in new countries - and finding new obstacles to overcome.

Marketing analytics have come a long way - but that’s not always the best thing for a brand. When I was at The Clorox Company in the early nineties, we determined whether a TV ad worked based on how the commercial fared adjacent to a fake pilot in a fake theater. People watched the pilot, and we looked to see if they subsequently bought the product in the adjacent fake store. Believe it or not, this did give a relatively good indication of the efficacy of the ad. Now of course, on the internet, we can more precisely target and measure the performance of search engine ads, emails, and even streaming TV ads (which we love). However, focusing purely on engagement can take you away from your brand’s values. Sometimes the most salacious or fear-mongering ads get the most response. We see this especially in political ads. But messaging that gets a big rise out of audiences may not be s consistent with your brand. It can even tarnish it. At BabyQuip we don’t go in for fear-based ads, rather we focus on what we can do to make a family’s vacation better! This point often gets lost in the internet age, where it’s easy to grow short-sighted because of the infinite game of clicks and likes. Modern marketing is a powerful tool when used strategically; just don’t over-rely on it, or it could diminish the heart of your brand.

Collaboration is key to the BabyQuip community. We often hear stories of our Quality Providers stepping up to help each other. Ashley, one of our Seattle-based QPs, was recently tasked with 4 parties in one day. That’s a lot of work for a single person, so she engaged other QPs to help her out. As you can see in the photos below, the parties were a success! Ashley shared this story on our Facebook page to celebrate her community of QPs. The fact that our QPs view each other as a community, and not just as competition, speaks volumes about the organization we’ve built. As the BabyQuip community continues to grow, we’re committed to fostering even more collaboration and teamwork.

Do you want to build your own business? Go work for a big, established company first. I started my career at The Clorox Company right out of Stanford Business School in 1989, and my experience laid some crucial groundwork for becoming a founder later on. Spending nearly 4 years at Clorox taught me what it takes to build a strong brand. It was my post-graduate degree in marketing. In the brand management function at a leading consumer packaged goods company, I learned everything about how to build a brand and a business. I filed market research, led advertising campaigns, developed sales promotions, analyzed pricing, learned how important it is to engage your distribution partners, and so much more. I learned just how hard creativity is, and how important the foundation is for a business to succeed. It turned out that these skills were in high demand when the Internet started to take off in the mid-1990s. These lessons served me as I helped found Match, and have stayed with me until today. Now, I consider building brands my superpower. If I’d jumped right into building my own business, I’d never have gained that expertise.

For lots of our Quality Providers, a BabyQuip side hustle is even more lucrative than a day job. I loved this story (linked in the comments) in particular, about a Florida mom who made over $85,000 last year renting out strollers, car seats, and other baby gear to vacationing families. The extra money she and her husband earned from their BabyQuip side hustle is giving them the breathing room they need to pay off debts and save for their children’s college education - goals that would take much longer to accomplish without this bonus income. Plus, she says it’s really fun and rewarding to help out other moms and kids. Stories like these remind me, every day, why we do what we do at BabyQuip: to support families everywhere, whether they’re on vacation or saving for college.

VCs will often tell you to recruit the best talent possible. At BabyQuip, we’re taking the opposite approach. Instead of only looking outward for rockstars, we’re also finding them within our organization. For example, Nicole Kitzman is a VP of marketing. She spent 10 years at Google before starting her own small mom-and-pop baby gear rental business. She then joined BabyQuip as a Quality Provider and was so in tune with our mission that she joined us full-time as QP recruiting manager. In fact, 8 people on our full-time staff began as Quality Providers. Kim ConnoIIy, Blair Gross, Stephanie Jackson, Lisa Holmes, Sarah Huff, MA, Nicole Kitzman, Minette Chan, and Teresa O. Each of these individuals has grown rapidly with our organization and has demonstrated incredible commitment to our mission. After several decades and just as many startups, I’ve learned that sometimes, the best talent is standing right in front of you.