Seed for Success | Empowering Women Entreprenuers

Dapple goes international. Real international.

We’ve been really excited to see our Dapple locator grow from 2 stores in our neighborhood to over 20 all over the United States in just a few short months (http://www.dapplebaby.com/dapple-locator.html#).

But several weeks ago we received a retailer request that was definitely out of the ordinary: the request came from a from a small baby store chain in Hong Kong. They liked the idea behind Dapple and wanted to start importing our products. We hadn’t really planned on branching out beyond North America just yet but these stores looked fun — so we seized the opportunity.

We’ll keep you updated on how Hong Kong Sales are going. If you find yourself in the area – check out one these stores and get some Dapple.

Causeway Bay (Tel 2890-4110)
Causeway Bay Commercial Building, 13 Sugar Street, HONG KONG

Mongkok (Tel 2950-4110)
38 Plaza, 38 Shan Tung Street, Mongkok, Kowloon, HONG KONG

Metro Town (Tel 3549-8910)
Shop 75, Level 2, Metro Town Shopping Mall, 8 Keng Leng Road, TKO, NT, HONG KONG

Cathie Black, President of Hearst Magazines, could easily start her own baby business. When we spoke to her several weeks ago, she was bubbling with brilliant ideas about how to best get our name and message out there.

“Make your presence felt and be persistent,” was Cathie’s overarching advice. This holds true across the board — be it with retailers, media or the end customer.

“If a retailer does not return phone calls,” Cathie said “try showing up at their doorstep – product in hand.” She also encouraged us to start a newsletter - something we are currently working on - to update key people on our progress and to keep Dapple fresh on their minds.

Cathie thought it would be great if we could get high-profile, trend-setting, “alpha moms” to try out and endorse our products. We immediately seized on that advice and worked on getting Dapple into the hands of taste-maker mommies. Our efforts paid off: a couple of weeks ago we were invited by Jayneoni Moore to include Dapple products in an exclusive baby gift basket for moms such as Halle Berry, Jessica Alba, Angelina Jolie and Courtney Cox. In fact, we just received a “Thank You” note from Courtney and Coco telling us how much they liked Dapple. Cool, right?

Per Cathie’s advice we also keep pursuing media channels that are important to us. This month Dapple was featured in the New York Observer, Fit Pregnancy, Big Apple Parent and many, many online publications and blogs.

But Cathie’s most creative ideas were focused on the most important person … the average parent who, like us, is facing a sink full of smelly bottles and a house full of sticky toys. Cathie counseled us to be everywhere that parents with young babies are, to be a resource to them and to get as many of them to try our products as possible. Some of the many specific ideas Cathie had were: give bottle washing presentations in places where parents congregate and on You Tube, distribute product samples in new parents classes, pediatrician offices and nursery schools, host lunches, sponsor free parenting classes, and much more…

When we hung up the phone we felt very very busy but extremely energized.

Thank you Cathie!

BTW: Here’s a link to the NY Observer story. Please note that my kids are much cuter in real life.
(http://www.observer.com/2008/arts-culture/ivory-snow-uber-moms).

If theYahoo! Seeds for Success grant consisted solely of meeting David Vinjamuri – and nothing else – it would already be a rocking program.

My mom is in marketing and writes a marketing column for one of Germanys’ leading business magazines. Vinjamuri is long since a household name – at least in my parents’ household. So I was super-excited when I realized he was the branding expert we would be meeting with as part of the Seeds for Success program.

Vinjamuri is young, casual and totally compelling. Tamar and I walked away from our meeting converted to the Vinjamuri way of approaching a start-up.

Vijamuri’s over-arching message was: “take things slowly.” For his recent book “Accidental Branding,” Vinjamuri followed several entrepreneurs who started small and made it big. He says for most of them: “The first few years were often exceptionally excruciatingly slow.” This was a very comforting notion for Tamar and me. Since we started Dapple, we have always felt outside pressure to rush. Rush to he market before a competitor gets there first. Rush to finish a product before a big expo. Rush to get word out to as many people as possible. Vinjamuri convinced us that it is okay to slow down sometimes. Be deliberate about growing the brand in the first couple of years, establish a core group of devoted fans and take it from there.

Part of that message was Vinjamuri’s advice to pay attention to every last detail. It took us nearly two years to formulate our first two products and we were oftentimes frustrated with how slowly things were going. Today we are grateful that we never compromised on any parts of our formulas - that we kept on testing and refining until we felt that they were perfect. We are now in the process of changing our packaging and designing custom molds for all out bottles. This is not a cheap undertaking but Vinjamuri’s focus on details reinforced our own commitment to design excellence. In a couple of months we hope to be able to put that prefect formula into the perfect bottle.

Another related Vinjamuri message that really resonated with us is “persistence.” Almost every one of the successful entrepreneurs that Vinjamuri followed experienced lulls and slumps in their early stages and some even considered throwing in the towel. While so many exciting things have happened to us in the last couple of months - we are now available in boutiques all over Manhattan and Brooklyn, internet sales are going great, we are being approached almost on a daily basis by retailers who want to carry Dapple and we get amazing feedback from customers across the US - there are certainly also days where nothing goes our way. People don’t return calls, buyers are rude, we get turned down. At the end of such a day we are often overcome by self-doubts and at such times it is really helpful to remember Vinjamuri’s words.

After our meeting, I picked up a copy of Vinjamuri’s book. It’s a fun read and the case studies really solidify his messages to us. But now Vinjamuri is in trouble. On page 16 of “Accidental Branding” he writes “do we really need 24 flavors of toothpaste or 14 kind of dishwasher detergent?”

“Yes Mr. Vinjamuri: the world needs at least one more dishwasher detergent.”

I was a little nervous about the thought of changing our website. I loved the look and feel of our site and had become attached to dapplebaby.com as one would to a pair of favorite jeans. It took all of 5 minutes on the phone with Scott Smigler and his team from Exclusive Concepts to dispel that nervousness.

Scott has over a decade of experience in internet marketing. He started when he was only 15! (15? At 15, I was busy doing math homework, listening to U2, initiating and ending crushes, and trying (in vain) to grow dreadlocks). Scott’s combination of youth and experience translates into a hip sort of savyness. When we met him he was brimming with ideas. Scott’s main message to us was “Engage your audience in every way possible.” He encouraged us to create a Facebook group for Dapple, hand out samples to as many parents as possible and reach out to parent bloggers and online communities.

He took the same approach when it came to our website. While is must certainly serve an informational purpose – getting people acquainted with our product line and brand – the website should ideally do more than that. It should draw the audience into a dialogue with us, the founders of the company, as well as with our brand.

We think the new site does just that. The Exclusive Concepts team kept the sprit and original feel of our design but added so many interactive dimensions. A visitor now has a chance to connect with Dapple in a myriad of different ways — to learn about the background story, give her opinion and suggestions, read updates, join our group or mailing list, watch Dapple videos, and buy products online. And because the new website was built totally within Yahoo! Merchant Solutions, it is easy for us at Dapple to manage orders, maintain, and tailor the site based on feedback we receive.

We created Dapple with babies and families in mind. After having visited our site, we want people to think of us as friends. We think the new website achieves that goal.

Do you agree? www.dapplebaby.com.

PS: Special thanks to Jared Lanyon and Herb Osher who spent countless hours on the phone with us making sure everything was just so.

Tamar and I met with Carolyn Kepcher in New York last week. A real force exuding confidence, competence, and charm, Carolyn graciously agreed to give us her insights into building a strong and successful business operation. She invited us to ask her questions about Dapple.

We first spoke about how to expand Dapple’s retail presence. Dapple is currently available in local New York stores and nation-wide online at diapers.com. We will soon build out our own e-commerce site where we will sell Dapple in cases of twelve. Next, we want to make Dapple available in larger national retail chains, and we asked Carolyn how to best go about it. She advised us to look for strategic outlets and partners and mentioned QVC and the Home Shopping Network as great places to start. “You can capture millions of viewers who are interested in learning about innovative products like yours,” she said. Teaming up with one of these channels would indeed be a great way to make our brand available to parents around America. Since our meeting, we have already started exploring ways to approach these channels.

“Instead of devoting too many resources on expensive ads, take advantage of all the Internet has to offer,” advised Carolyn further. Parents, like us, do indeed increasingly look online to find answers to their questions, connect to other parents, and keep apprised about offerings in the baby market. Once people find out and learn more about Dapple — we know they will love it. So we are determined to make Dapple a real presence online. Retail chain success is hopefully bound to follow…

While we were happy to note that Carolyn shares our conviction in Dapple, and were really taken with her business acumen, what stuck out most to us was Carolyn’s role as a mother. She shared stories about her children and told us how glad she was to have more time to spend with them. While there may never be clear-cut answers to the career/life balance conundrum, it is heartening to tap into a network of successful women who deal with the same questions.

Speaking of questions… if you have any questions for us or would like to give us advice on Dapple, please do so on this blog. We’d love to hear from you.

Dana

http://www.ny1.com:80/ny1/content/index.jsp?stid=21&aid=81336

Hi:

It’s Tamar — Dana’s business partner and co-founder of Dapple.

Starting a business can be tough. There are unanticipated obstacles around every corner and all too often many closed doors.

But then there are also plenty unexpected moments of delight. And those moments overshadow and outshine everything else.

One such moment came a couple of days ago when we received an email from Lynette Damir Founder and CEO of Swaddle Designs (http://www.swaddledesigns.com). Making and selling stylish and amazing blankets (Dana and I are huge fans), Lynette has turned her idea into a multimillion dollar business in just a couple of years.

Lynette had read about Dapple on the Seeds for Success site and she liked our idea. So, in addition to posting an encouraging comment on our blog, she sent us an email full of tips on how to build a successful business in the baby world.

Carolyn Kepcher makes the case for a mentor in her blog and concludes by saying “And then someday, become a mentor yourself, and pay it forward.”

Entrepreneurs like Lynette, have made the experience of starting a business so much more rewarding for us and Dana and I hope that one day we will be able to advise a fledgling business and pay it forward .

Tamar

First off, thanks for the wonderful comments.
Dawn you are absolutely right. Our website is www.dapplebaby.com.
Everyone: please visit and sign up for our mailing list.
Max Singford: Congratulations on your triplets! You must be even busier than we are now. Send us your address to info@dapplebaby.com and we will send you some Dapple for your many bottles.

Now here’s what we’ve been up to:

This week had been a real whirlwind for us.

We officially launched Dapple in several baby stores in Manhattan. Check out our dapple locator http://www.dapplebaby.com/index.php?locator
We are hitting the other boroughs in the next days and will be updating the locator daily. So please stay tuned.

Thanks to the great PR team working with Yahoo!, we had an interview with Reuters yesterday and will be filmed for a segment on NY1 next week. We were also approached with some exciting national press opportunities and will let you know what happens.

Yahoo! has paired us up with an incredible web agency. We started working with Scott Smigler and his team from Exclusive Concepts on building a comprehensive and completely original web strategy for Dapple. Scott has amazing energy and we can’t wait to see where he takes Dapple online.

On the new product development front, we are choosing packaging for our toy-cleaner spray and wipes. We will post the different options that we have narrowed down on this site shortly so you all can let us know which you prefer. We’d love your input.

Back to work,
Dana

It is 3:30 am. It’s been a crazy day and I just realized that I am out of clean bottles. Judging by the noises coming from the crib, Maya is in no mood to wait for her milk. As I am standing at the sink, rinsing and re-rinsing bottles, I am thinking to myself: “There’s gotta be a better way to wash baby bottles, without having to worry about the soap left behind, the lingering odor and the persistent milk residue.” The problem is: There isn’t.

The next morning over triple shot lattes (a girl who cleans bottles at 3:30 am needs her caffeine) my friend Tamar and I discuss the matter. Tamar has two small kids and her oldest is highly allergic. We wonder why there are so many products for babies, from special laundry detergents to hair shampoos, but there is nothing specific to wash the very items that go into their mouth; we discuss the persistent breast milk film that simply does not come off the bottles with conventional dish soap; we lament the lingering milk odor….and then we decide to do something about it.

That was two years ago. Since then we have worked with a group of dedicated professionals, chemists and pediatricians, testers and designers, who all shared our passion. We have enjoyed the unwavering backing of our friends and families. And finally we have reached our goal: today we are coming out with Dapple, a line of natural-based, baby-specific cleaners. The first two products are a hand dish liquid and an automatic dish detergent. Besides being natural-based, free of parabens, phthalates, SLES, dyes, and artificial fragrances, Dapple dish detergents work great, smell delicious, look amazing on any sink, and are earth-friendly.

As we are now reaching out to retailers, spreading the word about Dapple to parents, and continuing to solve baby cleaning problems with additional, exciting products, such as a toy cleaner spray and wipes, we just received the news that we won the Seeds for Success grant. It could not come at a better time for us.

The cash component will certainly come in handy. More importantly, the advice of proven women entrepreneurs will help us navigate the challenges of introducing a new brand to the market. They can provide valuable marketing, retail, technology and financing advice, and we can’t wait to be working with them. Needless to say: having the support and recognition of Yahoo! and fwm is a tremendous boost to us.

We will use this blog to keep you posted on Dapple’s progress. At the same time, we urge you to keep us posted. Please try Dapple on your baby dishes, and let us know what you think, how you use it and what other cleaners you wish were available for your household. And don’t forget: If you don’t use bottles anymore - no problem: After all, Dapple works for baby and works for you.

Happy washing.
Blog you soon.

Dana