Seems like a very good idea, considering baby clothes can be expensive and are generally needed for only a short time. I think this model would also work well with women's evening gowns and men's tuxedos (much like tuxedo renting currently happens, but mailed to me and I can return it whenever).
I've talked with people who started a similar service a year or so ago, called Bebaroo (recently renamed Bebarang). In fact, they use the same description, "Netflix for baby clothes".
Well, they don't use the same (at least on the frontpage): "Bebarang: Online Baby Clothes Rentals"
To me that's a missed chance. Rental I think temporary ownership (negative), with Netflix I think "once i'm done, I get rid of it" (positive). Just my opinion tho.
I was surprised to see Netflix there and not see a trademark notice. Similarly they use "Plum" which is already a baby food manufacturer (perhaps they're not in the US) so I'd imagine they're likely to be getting some TM infringement/passing-off notices if they haven’t already.
I love the look and feel of the landing page, the typography is concise and clear.
That said a couple of landing page suggestions:
a) You need to turn the "subscribe" call to action into a button or underline it, it's not clear to avg web user what to do. Suggestion for A/B is a less scary action than "subscribe", maybe "Try it Now!"
b) Get the "stains or spills" content into the top paragraph, it's fundamental in closing the sale. As a parent the #1 thing i wondered was how do you address the "ewwww" factor of sharing baby clothes, shouldn't have to scroll to see that.
Hope you guys crush it, sending along to my wife :)
re: call to action: you should a/b eventually, but start with best practices. buttons > links, use colors that draw attention, don't let it blend with other page elements. (for instance, the left-alignment makes it blend with the text above it.)
Agreed, use the highlight colour inverted with the button right aligned to the para (that green doesn't say baby clothes to me incidentally, though I see the organic bit, looks a bit reserved).
can't say I like the landing page....it looks way too much like a wordpress blog...and an incomplete one at that.
granted I'm not a target customer, so maybe their research shows that it works...but if I came to the website by any non-referral method(i.e. a friend saying go there)...I would have hit the close button right away
Thanks so much for the great feedback! I'm the founder, built this site in a weekend to start testing the idea. We're working on a rev of the site that will launch in the next two weeks. Love these suggestions.
Why, oh why, is the most important text obfuscated in an image? I wanted to pass this on to a friend who's just had a baby, copying the "How it works" paragraph into the email. But there's no text, it's a JPEG! There's not even any ALT text, which means that my visually impaired friend won't be able to use her screen reader on your main page. Don't use JPEGs for text!
In addition to "Screen readers can't get text out of jpegs", jpegs make text look horrible compared to PNGs. (samwyse didn't explain that last point, but assuredly knows this).
This is basically what my family and friends have going on right now, so I know it will work. We're constantly shipping boxes of cloths around to each other. Great idea.
Sharing clothing within an extended family is only to be expected. The dynamics change markedly when dealing with pre-owned clothes from random strangers however as plumgear will no doubt find out rather quickly. They do address the spills and stains issue up front but I think it will take a lot of work to get over the ewww factor.
You should use something like Recurly or Chargify + a real payment gateway/merchant account for subscriptions. Using Paypal is just asking for trouble. We've been using Recurly for our clients and it's been working flawlessly (kind of expensive at $70/m, but IMO it's completely worth it for any kind of business.)
232 million people use PayPal. A couple hundred at most use Recurly. Recurly's screwed a higher percentage of its users than PayPal, by far. If you're not aware of how, go back and read Recurly's blog posts from just after their beta days, when they massively raised prices and removed API access from plans of users that had already invested time in fully integrating those APIs with their live websites.
I think the track record points to PayPal as a safer choice. Once the new business is established, it can build its own in-house billing to support additional payment types. Writing your own subscription management for most sites is not hard.
If Recurly had some issues in their beta/early after beta days, that's understandable. But Paypal has been screwing users for 10+ and counting. I have myself heard at least 20 horror stories about PayPal freezing money for no reason. It happened to one of my businesses just half a year ago. They've decided to freeze all payments, and only after a month they've decided to "verify" whether we're a legitimate business or not by calling our customers and asking whether they've received the product or not. Thankfully, after that they unfroze the money, but for a young business, that was almost a death blow.
It's not about percentages, but about total numbers. Paypal fucked over tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands merchants. If you want some reading material, go to http://paypalsucks.com/
And with all due respect, building in-house billing may not be as easy as you think. I run a software development company, and I recommend my clients to use Recurly.
PayPal is no worse than any other merchant account provider in regards to their policies for risk reviews and what happens when an account is frozen. The policies are essentially word for word the same at PayPal and at the major banks underwriting most merchant accounts. Sticking a subscription-management-as-a-service startup on top of your payment processor does not alleviate any of these issues.
I know exactly how easy/hard building in-house billing is, thank you very much. I've built many, for my own business which supports over 80,000 users with a myriad of complex one-time/subscription/overage/special-rate/etc. payment plans, and for others. You can look at my profile if you wish some evidence.
Very good idea. I see a problem with the business model though. My son is 6 months now and we have only ever bought a couple of cheap body stockings. Everything else was donated to use by friends and family who have had children recently. Even though I like this idea, I probably wouldn't have used it simply because I didn't have to.
And I don't think we're unique in that sense; My impression is that people either want new clothes (And thus aren't your target customers) or they are second-handers like me. But maybe there's a third group; I definitely think you should test the marked.
I agree with this. I have a 2 year old and a new one on the way, so I am somewhat familiar. It is tough to beat all the free stuff you get from friends and family. Also, consignment sales are a hit with moms. They go NUTS for them... and for $49, they can walk away with 10-15 items and not have to worry for at least 2-3 months.
The thing I noticed was that you can't pick and choose what you like (maybe I misunderstood). Basically you just get a random dress or outfit. If this were truly a netflix style system, you should be able to choose the latest fashion and swap in and out as much as you want. The benefit is the latest fashion for less. That being said, I really like the concept.
Another issue I'd wonder about is operational costs. DVDs are pretty easy to warehouse and ship. Clothes come in all kinds of shapes and sizes, plus they have to be washed. Definitely requires a more complex/costly operation, which is amortized over a smaller user base (there are more people watching movies than there are raising young children).
I think that's significantly different than, say, living in California where you may originally be from some other state that's as distant as you are from Moscow or Madrid, and not have as many friends and family...
Also, no, it's probably not ideal for everyone, but by being a small operation, she can satisfy a niche and not have to worry about conquering the entire baby clothing market.
Lastly, even though we got plenty of stuff from friends and family, I could see utilizing this to get some 'extras', especially if it's really high quality stuff. Hand-me-downs can sometimes be a bit ragged.
I think that's significantly different than, say, living in California where you may originally be from some other state that's as distant as you are from Moscow or Madrid, and not have as many friends and family...
That's probably right, at least to some degree.
In any case, California is certainly a big marked, so even if you can only target a small percentage it could still be a viable business.
I hope you guys crush it as well. This really taps into the market of people who don't want to spend the time going to thrift stores (or be caught seen in them), but want to save a buck.
I wonder if this type of market is going to expand out more and more to put future generations into the "Why buy when you can rent?" mentality for their entire lives. Makes sense for being able to borrow something when you need it and then return it instead of having it take up space in your house.
The lady got what I thought was a decent deal with her main problem being that she diluted the heck out of the company by giving out 10% of the shares to anyone who even sneezed near the company.
Is there market for sharing clothes like this? I understand if its between family or extended family members but I did not think one would purchase used clothes for babies.
Yes. Yes. Oh, a thousand times yes (as a father of two).
Babies go through clothes fast - not wearing them out, but because they grow so fast. Nobody buys all their baby clothes, we all get them from somewhere else, and very often from used-clothing stores.
I predicted this business sixteen years ago. About time somebody's giving it a decent shot.
I don't know about you but I prefer to buy fresh diapers for my toddler :) In all seriousness though, my wife often finds buying in bulk at kids r us to be as cost effective as diapers.com is (YRMV obviously).
Yeah, I assumed the same, just throwing in a lil' parenting humor :) My wife 'n I looked at cloth diapers as opposed to single use diapers, and any potential cost savings were completely offset for us by the additional time/work investment needed by choosing a cloth diaper solution as well as the smell factor...there's ALWAYS a smell factor, regardless of how 'odorless' you're led to believe their bins are.
We used a service for our first kid, and yeah, keeping a pail of soiled diapers around for a week isn't ideal. For our second kid, we just purchased our own diapers and did the laundry every two days.
I would love to see this for (unused disposable) diapers. I bought wayyy too many 1s and have a bunch left over that I will never use. I wish I could send them into a service and get some 3s that I could actually use now.
Nifty idea. I like the environmentally-friendly detergent, etc. but my first thought was to wonder how effective it is at killing bacteria. Some parents are going to be concerned about that, so it might be good to have some data.
Any problems with using somebody else's trademark in your service's tagline?
Can I market my business as the "Netflix of ..." or the "Apple of ..." or the "Hacker News of ..." without getting permission from that trademark holder?
(I know a lot of generic products use a tiny line of type like "compare to Kellogg's Frosted Flakes," but it sounds like Plum Gear is taking it a step further than that.)
While it's an interesting hypothetical, I don't actually see the word "Netflix" anywhere on the site. A Google search suggests it's a snappy description they've used when describing the site to a journalist, but I don't see that they've written it anywhere themselves.
If they had done, well...I think you'd have to be very very careful. You wouldn't want to create the slightest hint of confusion that your service is endorsed by Netflix.
My opinion is that this is a clear case of confusion. That a layman could readily confuse the origin of the goods with the mentioned company. You usually have to acknowledge the RTM/TM and make a clear statement that your goods do not originate with the TM owner and are not warranted by them.
If you can't afford to answer a lawsuit then I'd avoid it! You don't need to be in the wrong to get sued.
Comparison advertising is usually specifically allowed and the form of comparison advertising makes clear that your goods do not originate with the company you're comparing with. Just don't lie especially if you chose a large company to compare with, they'll have you for every last cent.
It could be misconstrued that Netflix is endorsing it and because there is an alternative way to describe what Netflix does (i.e. Rental Service), they may be asked to change the wording. If using "Netflix" is the only way to describe the product without actually implying endorsement, than they will probably be safe. Another perspective is that you can generally use other trademarked names as long as you don't make profit from their actual names. So I can make a netflixsucks.com site and would be protected in doing so as long as I don't make a profit. Other than that, as long as they are truthful and don't confuse customers they can probably find a way to finagle using "Netflix for Baby Clothes" somewhere in their promo material.
This works out to about $21-24/outfit you'd need for a 0-12 month old (assuming new clothes every 3 mo). It's a good abstraction and solves the "I'm drowning in boxes of unused baby clothes" problem pretty nicely.
I'm sorry, but I don't see this working for complete strangers. It's true that extended families regularly exchange clothes, but they're not the real competition.
Your real competitors are the (fairly regular around here) mom swap events. You can buy the same quantity of clothes for less than your monthly charges and see what you're getting in person.
I have to agree with the second point. Lots of churches and other organizations hold fairly regular kids resale events in our area. They tend to be a step up from what you'd find at the thrift store, but they're still sold for thrift-store prices.
Not only that, but it sounds like what you get is sort of a "surprise bag" of clothes that you don't get to select. So it's sort of like Netflix, if Netflix just picked out movies it thought you'd like, rather than letting you select the titles yourself.
In that sense, the swap sales have a clear advantage. You see something you like, you examine it right there, and you don't have to buy anything you don't like.
Personally, I wouldn't use this service because it sounds like what's being offered are designer clothes, and that doesn't fit our budget.
What I'd love to see is a service that offers something like Finland's famed "baby box" -- which is given to all new parents:
It's got a bunch of basic outfits -- no frills, just simple, normal-looking clothes.
If a company were to buy stuff like this in bulk, it could probably put together a great, low-price, one-stop-shop "baby box" here in the U.S. and still make a decent profit.
As the Father of a 19 month old I can only say this is a complete rip-off.
Craig's list, friends and family, birthdays, holidays, garage sales, second hand stores, 50% off coupons, the list goes on and on.
$16/mo for two outfits? Really? Maybe $1/mo/outfit or something like that and I'll bite. Right now, one years subscription would be more than her entire wardrobe and we're pretty much done until age 4.
agree. Even shopping at clearance at Target, Ross, Walmart and Marshals .. lets say 6 outfits over 3 months for 16X3 = $50(rounded up) - for $50 at discount stores... can go a long long way.
I thought the same thing, but ran it by my sister (a busy working mom) and she said the benefit wasn't the value of the clothes, but her time-- this system would save her from having to go shopping.
As others have said this works out to $21-24/outfit...but that's a rental fee, you don't get to keep the outfit to pass down to other kids (of your own or of your family and friends).
I suppose there's some value in being able to trade in the outfits once a month to get new ones but it's not enough of an appeal for me to justify the price. We currently pay ~$10-20 for an outfit for my 9 month old daughter which lasts her about 3 months and $15-$30 for my 2 year old son which last him 6-9 months.
I likely won't use this service unless the price drops although I appreciate the idea and the utility. Nice site too.
This is awesome, as a parent I can say this is something I would have loved up to just a few months ago. Come to think of it, I could use an adult version for myself :)
Having said that, here is some constructive criticism:
1 - If you subscribe, what kind of commitment are you making? Can you cancel the service @ any time?
2 - Make the available sizes known before you actually get to the point of subscribing. Our son is right on the line between 3-T and 4-T, but I didn't know the max size is 3-T until I got to the "subscribe" page.
Thanks so much for the great comments and feedback! I'm the founder, had this idea 12 weeks ago in the Launchpad class at Stanford's d.school. The site is extremely beta, I built in in a weekend to test the idea. We've taken on a technical co-founder who's rebuilding for us as we speak.
I was going to say, I submitted this but unfortunately I have nothing to do with the website. Caroline, great job. This community is great, people give great advice here, good luck!
While I am in the camp of swapping clothes with family and friends, I think this could work very well. I have met enough crazy parents that purchased Air Nike shoes for their non-walking babies to make me question their grip on reality. See http://www.google.com/search?q=baby+nike+air+jordan&tbm=... for what the stylish babies are wearing.
I would suggest letting parents pick the outfits, since anyone fashion conscious enough to want to use the service will be sensitive to what they get in the mail. I think if you focused on very high price baby stuff you could do well - items priced higher than the typical baby swap stuff.
This is great. I seem to remember something in a slightly different niche back in the mid-late nineties that ran into issues shipping worn clothing.. have you looked into any potential regulations with this?
I sincerely wish you luck. I have a 2 month old daughter who wears clothes sized for a 6 month old. It pains me to think about what we spent on clothes she only wore once or twice. I'll send the link to my wife since I have just about zero say (I'm not complaining) about the clothes my daughter wears.
I have a 2 month old daughter and it pains me how inconsistent sizing is for infants. We got a tremendous amount of clothing from friends and families. Within the 0-3 month range, we have clothes whose snaps literally won't close on my daughter (who is only 3rd percentile size for her age), and we also have clothes that are double her size. If I had paid for these, I'd be pissed as hell.
To everyone saying "too expensive", I think perhaps you are not the target market. I found the "Egg Baby" outfit that is pictured on the plumgear.com homepage: http://www.egg-baby.com/lightweight-knit-layette-p1ck400-lgr... It is currently selling for $42.25.
Perhaps it's a little expensive, but I believe "plum" here is not just a random word, but is referring to the quality of the goods being rented.
Now, one may separately question whether there is anybody in the target market, who wants these clothes but won't drop the funds to just buy them, but I can't speak to that either way; my family is more the "$5 for the all-the-clothes-you-can-stuff-into-a-garbage-bag special" sort of family. No rental service can compete in that part of the market, as fixed costs to ship one box would eat half my wardrobe "budget".
"Now, one may separately question whether there is anybody in the target market, who wants these clothes but won't drop the funds to just buy them, but I can't speak to that either way;"
I think that's going to be the problem. My wife used to work for families to whom money was pretty much no object. $42 and $16 are equivalent in their mind, and equal to about $0.25 to a family on a budget. I don't see them wanting the hassle of having to remember to return clothes within 3 months when it's effectively the same % of their income to buy them.
Yeah, but then you've got all this stuff and you eventually try to unload it on someone else who just had a kid. Is it any more difficult to return clothes then it is to store them?
For me, the cost of baby clothes isn't killing me, but if I crunch the numbers and this is cheaper, then I'd be convinced simply because I like the idea of re-use from both an environment and a de-cluttering angle.
I know several people in that range as well (and apparently am getting into it myself these days): For them, getting rid of stuff is hard as well. A known "Getting rid of things" path is also good.
This is a very solid value proposition for the middle class, once you figure in the right numbers.
The subscriptions are for outfit bundles. Under the lowest tier $16 plan, you get 2 outfits, 2 items per outfit. So the cost per item is:
$16 divided by 4 items = $4
However, you need to multiply that by the number of months before the baby grows out of the clothes. Using my 2-year old as an example, I say 2 months per item. So the cost becomes:
$16 divided by 4 items times 2 months = $8
Yes, $8 vs $42 may not make a difference for those on the poor/rich ends of the spectrum - but for the average environment-conscious American mom/dad, it's a major deal. The gap between the consignment bin/walmart/target and the high-end baby boutique is rather large and in my personal experience, not well filled.
My wife and I are getting ready to have kids soon. This is a really neat idea. However, I'm not sure how she'd feel about sharing clothes with people she doesn't know. However, expanding on this theme, something like this could also useful for things like Halloween, Christmas or other holiday outfits.
One note about the site though, at the bottom, the boxes under "Our brands" highlight when you mouse over them, but nothing happens when you click on them. It seemed a little strange since the boxes above them don't highlight when you mouse over them.
Agree with your first point. My wife would never, ever take "hand me downs" from folks that she doesn't know (regardless of whatever logic you throw at her). She'd rather spend the money.
Then, there are clearly other folks that think a service like this is too expensive.
Seems like my wife is one extreme (would rather spend lots of money buying stuff) and then there's another extreme (folks who don't want to spend money at all).
I'm wondering if the middle range is a large enough market.
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[ 3.7 ms ] story [ 192 ms ] threadI actually think a better market is offering a cloth diaper service, but I'm sure the USPS would have some issues with those packages!
A national flat-rate service that offers local folks for pickup/delivery would be very interesting.
It took me a minute to remember Netflix has that little DVDs-by-mail business as well. Maybe this slogan has an expiration date.
I've talked with people who started a similar service a year or so ago, called Bebaroo (recently renamed Bebarang). In fact, they use the same description, "Netflix for baby clothes".
http://www.bebarang.com/
http://www.annarbor.com/business-review/netflix-for-baby-clo...
To me that's a missed chance. Rental I think temporary ownership (negative), with Netflix I think "once i'm done, I get rid of it" (positive). Just my opinion tho.
IANA(TM)L.
http://tess2.uspto.gov/bin/showfield?f=doc&state=4006:21...
in the Nice Classification for clothing (25).
http://www.renttherunway.com/
That said a couple of landing page suggestions:
a) You need to turn the "subscribe" call to action into a button or underline it, it's not clear to avg web user what to do. Suggestion for A/B is a less scary action than "subscribe", maybe "Try it Now!"
b) Get the "stains or spills" content into the top paragraph, it's fundamental in closing the sale. As a parent the #1 thing i wondered was how do you address the "ewwww" factor of sharing baby clothes, shouldn't have to scroll to see that.
Hope you guys crush it, sending along to my wife :)
granted I'm not a target customer, so maybe their research shows that it works...but if I came to the website by any non-referral method(i.e. a friend saying go there)...I would have hit the close button right away
I think the track record points to PayPal as a safer choice. Once the new business is established, it can build its own in-house billing to support additional payment types. Writing your own subscription management for most sites is not hard.
It's not about percentages, but about total numbers. Paypal fucked over tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands merchants. If you want some reading material, go to http://paypalsucks.com/
And with all due respect, building in-house billing may not be as easy as you think. I run a software development company, and I recommend my clients to use Recurly.
I know exactly how easy/hard building in-house billing is, thank you very much. I've built many, for my own business which supports over 80,000 users with a myriad of complex one-time/subscription/overage/special-rate/etc. payment plans, and for others. You can look at my profile if you wish some evidence.
And I don't think we're unique in that sense; My impression is that people either want new clothes (And thus aren't your target customers) or they are second-handers like me. But maybe there's a third group; I definitely think you should test the marked.
> I live in Copenhagen, Denmark.
I think that's significantly different than, say, living in California where you may originally be from some other state that's as distant as you are from Moscow or Madrid, and not have as many friends and family...
Also, no, it's probably not ideal for everyone, but by being a small operation, she can satisfy a niche and not have to worry about conquering the entire baby clothing market.
Lastly, even though we got plenty of stuff from friends and family, I could see utilizing this to get some 'extras', especially if it's really high quality stuff. Hand-me-downs can sometimes be a bit ragged.
That's probably right, at least to some degree.
In any case, California is certainly a big marked, so even if you can only target a small percentage it could still be a viable business.
I wonder if this type of market is going to expand out more and more to put future generations into the "Why buy when you can rent?" mentality for their entire lives. Makes sense for being able to borrow something when you need it and then return it instead of having it take up space in your house.
A similar toy rental business was on Shark Tank this season: http://www.toygaroo.com/blog/?p=1734 http://inthesharktank.com/2011/03/shark-tank-premiers-bigges...
The lady got what I thought was a decent deal with her main problem being that she diluted the heck out of the company by giving out 10% of the shares to anyone who even sneezed near the company.
Best of luck.
Babies go through clothes fast - not wearing them out, but because they grow so fast. Nobody buys all their baby clothes, we all get them from somewhere else, and very often from used-clothing stores.
I predicted this business sixteen years ago. About time somebody's giving it a decent shot.
You should totally cross-market with the diaper services.
When the kid outgrows the diapers they are tossed/recycled, but not given to another kid.
Any problems with using somebody else's trademark in your service's tagline?
Can I market my business as the "Netflix of ..." or the "Apple of ..." or the "Hacker News of ..." without getting permission from that trademark holder?
(I know a lot of generic products use a tiny line of type like "compare to Kellogg's Frosted Flakes," but it sounds like Plum Gear is taking it a step further than that.)
If they had done, well...I think you'd have to be very very careful. You wouldn't want to create the slightest hint of confusion that your service is endorsed by Netflix.
If you can't afford to answer a lawsuit then I'd avoid it! You don't need to be in the wrong to get sued.
Comparison advertising is usually specifically allowed and the form of comparison advertising makes clear that your goods do not originate with the company you're comparing with. Just don't lie especially if you chose a large company to compare with, they'll have you for every last cent.
Your real competitors are the (fairly regular around here) mom swap events. You can buy the same quantity of clothes for less than your monthly charges and see what you're getting in person.
Not only that, but it sounds like what you get is sort of a "surprise bag" of clothes that you don't get to select. So it's sort of like Netflix, if Netflix just picked out movies it thought you'd like, rather than letting you select the titles yourself.
In that sense, the swap sales have a clear advantage. You see something you like, you examine it right there, and you don't have to buy anything you don't like.
Personally, I wouldn't use this service because it sounds like what's being offered are designer clothes, and that doesn't fit our budget.
What I'd love to see is a service that offers something like Finland's famed "baby box" -- which is given to all new parents:
http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2011/04/fin...
It's got a bunch of basic outfits -- no frills, just simple, normal-looking clothes.
If a company were to buy stuff like this in bulk, it could probably put together a great, low-price, one-stop-shop "baby box" here in the U.S. and still make a decent profit.
Craig's list, friends and family, birthdays, holidays, garage sales, second hand stores, 50% off coupons, the list goes on and on.
$16/mo for two outfits? Really? Maybe $1/mo/outfit or something like that and I'll bite. Right now, one years subscription would be more than her entire wardrobe and we're pretty much done until age 4.
I suppose there's some value in being able to trade in the outfits once a month to get new ones but it's not enough of an appeal for me to justify the price. We currently pay ~$10-20 for an outfit for my 9 month old daughter which lasts her about 3 months and $15-$30 for my 2 year old son which last him 6-9 months.
I likely won't use this service unless the price drops although I appreciate the idea and the utility. Nice site too.
Having said that, here is some constructive criticism:
1 - If you subscribe, what kind of commitment are you making? Can you cancel the service @ any time?
2 - Make the available sizes known before you actually get to the point of subscribing. Our son is right on the line between 3-T and 4-T, but I didn't know the max size is 3-T until I got to the "subscribe" page.
I would suggest letting parents pick the outfits, since anyone fashion conscious enough to want to use the service will be sensitive to what they get in the mail. I think if you focused on very high price baby stuff you could do well - items priced higher than the typical baby swap stuff.
Perhaps it's a little expensive, but I believe "plum" here is not just a random word, but is referring to the quality of the goods being rented.
Now, one may separately question whether there is anybody in the target market, who wants these clothes but won't drop the funds to just buy them, but I can't speak to that either way; my family is more the "$5 for the all-the-clothes-you-can-stuff-into-a-garbage-bag special" sort of family. No rental service can compete in that part of the market, as fixed costs to ship one box would eat half my wardrobe "budget".
I think that's going to be the problem. My wife used to work for families to whom money was pretty much no object. $42 and $16 are equivalent in their mind, and equal to about $0.25 to a family on a budget. I don't see them wanting the hassle of having to remember to return clothes within 3 months when it's effectively the same % of their income to buy them.
For me, the cost of baby clothes isn't killing me, but if I crunch the numbers and this is cheaper, then I'd be convinced simply because I like the idea of re-use from both an environment and a de-cluttering angle.
The subscriptions are for outfit bundles. Under the lowest tier $16 plan, you get 2 outfits, 2 items per outfit. So the cost per item is:
$16 divided by 4 items = $4
However, you need to multiply that by the number of months before the baby grows out of the clothes. Using my 2-year old as an example, I say 2 months per item. So the cost becomes:
$16 divided by 4 items times 2 months = $8
Yes, $8 vs $42 may not make a difference for those on the poor/rich ends of the spectrum - but for the average environment-conscious American mom/dad, it's a major deal. The gap between the consignment bin/walmart/target and the high-end baby boutique is rather large and in my personal experience, not well filled.
One note about the site though, at the bottom, the boxes under "Our brands" highlight when you mouse over them, but nothing happens when you click on them. It seemed a little strange since the boxes above them don't highlight when you mouse over them.
Then, there are clearly other folks that think a service like this is too expensive.
Seems like my wife is one extreme (would rather spend lots of money buying stuff) and then there's another extreme (folks who don't want to spend money at all).
I'm wondering if the middle range is a large enough market.
The idea of washing strangers clothing for a baby in their very weak cleaning products is just ridiculous.