“MOMBOX” Subscription Offers Postpartum Recovery Products

This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.

[Music]

What's up friends, listeners, and community? Hey, guess what? This episode is going out on the 4th of July for our American listeners. And maybe you're familiar with this. Elsewhere around the world, this is the American Day of Independence.

Happy Independence Day, happy 4th of July. If you're listening later, if your country doesn't observe the same kind of holiday. Well, the beautiful thing about independence is you can celebrate it anytime you want. And I think a celebration of independence is a wonderful thing. So how about you?

What does independence mean to you? When I'm on the road signing books, I often sign with different inscriptions depending on the book and the person. But one of my favorite inscriptions is to say, so-and-so to your freedom. Here's to your freedom, here's to your independence, here's to whatever it is that you're trying to create for yourself. And to me, independence or freedom is essentially about choice.

The opposite of freedom is to be in bondage, to be constrained, to perhaps be on the outside looking in at something, but without a visible means of gaining entrance to this elusive, desirable world. And so much of my work is about helping you gain entrance to the world where you make more of your own decisions, a world in which you have more autonomy and can build out the future that is most desirable for you. So on this Independence Day, how are you making that happen for yourself? What are you building? What are you crafting?

What are you working for? Also in today's story, because you know it all connects, after a difficult shopping experience, a new mom creates her own products for postpartum recovery. She calls it Mom Box, and it now generates over $5,000 a month in profit. Three cheers for freedom. This story is coming right up.

[Music]

When Kate Westerfeldt gave birth to her son in 2016, she thought that the most painful part of pregnancy was over. What she didn't realize was that the postpartum recovery period for moms can be just as difficult. Only 72 hours after delivering her son, Kate found herself headed to Target, along with her husband. Nobody had told her that so many things were required for her own self care. And she only found out from the nurse that she would need stuff like pads, creams, bath soaks, and nursing aides.

Kate had prepared the nursery, but failed to prepare anything for herself. Rather than risk sending her husband into the store to figure out which nipple balm was best, Kate decided to go herself. In pain, she found herself wandering the aisles of Target. To her dismay, the store had an underwhelming selection. By the time she was done shopping, she was so exhausted and upset that she snapped at the in-store barista simply for not leaving enough room for milk and her coffee.

That was when Kate realized she was under far too much stress. The entire experience was too much for her, and something had to be done. In the age of convenience where Amazon can deliver anything from groceries to razors to our doorsteps, Kate knew there had to be a better way for moms to get postpartum products. After all, they were the ones who needed the convenience the most. But her research in the online space turned up few results, and there was no real conversation happening around the topic.

This was an opportunity that she knew she could take advantage of. With that in mind, Kate decided to build MomBox, which would provide a range of quality care products in packages. To determine which products to include in each box, Kate first relied on her personal experience during her postpartum recovery. But as she expanded, she started testing the products herself. One memory she will never forget is wearing different maternity pads around her house for an entire year, just so she could figure out which one was the most durable.

She also did more homework in the form of customer surveys and market research. This led to several findings, one of which was that over 1/3 of women giving birth in America will have a cesarean section. And these moms have different needs than those with vaginal births. This insight guided her in deciding the type of products that she would offer. Now, the first sale that Kate made came through a social media post.

Her friends who noticed her new idea supported her. And eventually the news of MomBox spread through word of mouth. This customer acquisition strategy was cheap. Kate could just focus on building a product so good that women would talk about it on their own. It also aligned with something else she found in her research.

New moms and moms-to-be are innately social. 60% of them would look around social media before making a purchase decision that related to motherhood. Startup costs were around $30,000, which went toward product testing, inventory, and equipment. But with a strategy that focused on keeping costs low, Kate managed to grow MomBox into a profitable business. Two years in, MomBox now generates over $5,000 a month in profit.

She typically sells 100 to 200 MomBoxes each month, with 60 to 70% of the boxes being purchased as gifts. And there are now three versions. The original MomBox for vaginal births, $99. The C-section MomBox, also $99. And a deluxe MomBox for $179, which includes a combo of all the products.

Looking back, she stresses the importance of knowing your business model. From day one, Kate realized that the cost of each package she offered must be cheaper than if you went to Amazon and added all the products into your cart. And also, she had to provide free, two-day standard shipping as well. She said it was just what people expect these days. She's now exploring paid advertising and working on improving her inventory management.

To that end, she's in the midst of hiring a fulfillment manager to take care of all the shipping, which is currently being done in-house. The ability to get additional help has given her the flexibility and freedom to spend her time as she pleases, which is what she calls the best part of growing MomBox. [Music]

Well, I think the MomBox is a genius product. Talk about providing a clear and specific solution to a very real practical need and a highly identifiable and engaged target market. I mean, this is like a case study for that.

Also, the kind of organic marketing that she's doing is great, but I feel like it could be really ramped up, at least when she's ready for it, right? So no pressure. I mean, like you have to do what's best for you. This is totally the kind of project that's gonna go over really well in a gift guide, maybe even with a PR campaign, although I don't usually recommend going out to hire a publicist. This is the kind of targeted product that might work well for that.

And yes, of course, some kind of targeted advertising as well. And in that case, you wanna target not new moms, but people who are going to be new moms, or people who are family members of expected mothers, right? Kate has a strong origin story, a terrific name. I mean, MomBox, that's just perfect. It sounds like she just needs to work out those kinks with inventory management and shipping.

So those are problems, but they fall into that category of good problems to have because your business is growing. All right, congratulations to her and happy Independence Day to everyone out there. Again, even if you're listening later, even if you're not in the United States, independence is something that you can claim for yourself any day of the year. Inspiration is good, but inspiration with action is better. Our show notes, including links to all things MomBox are at sidehustleschool.com/915.

We are cruising along, much more is coming up soon, and I hope you will join me. Be sure you're subscribed to tell your friends, it's completely free. My name is Chris Guillebeau for Side Hustle School. [Music]

From the Onward Project.