The Carriage Trade: Stay-at-Home Moms Get Entrepreneurial
Tamara Monosoff, a former business consultant and Clinton White House staffer, quit work to stay at home when her daughter Sophia was born. Then she found herself annoyed by the constant need to re-roll the toilet paper Sophia unraveled onto the floor.
So she invented a special latch to prevent the problem. Now, she sells the $6.95 product to parents and pet owners.
"It's not glamorous," says Ms. Monosoff, who lives in Walnut Creek, Calif. But it's profitable. She projects sales of more than $1 million next year from the TP Saver and her other products, including duck and puppy shoe-stickers that help children tell left from right. Her husband, Brad Kofoed, recently quit his job in software sales to work with her. In March, they hired a full-time nanny.
For many women who leave the work force to care for children, motherhood is making invention a necessity. The daily routine of child-care presents such a minefield of little problems that they turn to tinkering, and then market their brainstorms. This month Ms. Monosoff signed a book deal to write a guide for aspiring inventor moms while she runs her company and Web site to promote other mothers' products. This month's featured mom invented the Bellybra, an exercise girdle for pregnancy.
Betty Chin , senior vice president of merchandising at the Right Start, a children's-product retailer in Calabasas, Calif., says the uptick in mom inventions began in the late '90s, when a Colorado English teacher, Julie Aigner-Clark, came out with Baby Einstein videos -- educational tapes for infants and toddlers on fine art, classical music and poetry. The tapes prompted mothers around the country to make educational home movies. This year, retail sales of Baby Einstein products, now owned by Walt Disney Co., are expected to reach $165 million.
Denise Marshall has sold more than 20,000 Mac & Cool instant cooling bowls, which she designed after so many failed attempts to get the temperature of her kids' food down fast enough. "I was always blowing," said the former Clorox Co. mechanical engineer, who lives in Chandler, Ariz. Doing business as "Made for Mom," Ms. Marshall has teamed up with another mother, a former insurance-company risk manager, who invented a nonspill snack cup.
A Chicago banker who had given financial advice to wealthy families for 18 years, Susan Beacham quit six years ago to become a stay-at-home mom. Instead, she saw a new market. To teach children to make financial decisions, she designed a school curriculum on money and invented a piggy bank with four separate "tummies" to stow cash for saving, spending, donating and investing.
The TP Saver, a device to prevent babies and pets from unraveling toilet paper
The pig is a brisk seller for the One Step Ahead catalog, says Andrea Galinski, One Step's merchandising manager. She says a quarter of company sales are in goods invented by parents, mostly mothers.
Laine Caspi once worked from midnight to 8 a.m. as a suicide hotline crisis counselor in Los Angeles. Then, during the day, she would get on her hands and knees and bark like a dog with her little boy.
"At a certain point, I realized the job was incompatible with child-rearing," she says. So she quit in November 2001, when she was pregnant with her second child. Then her baby carrier brought on severe back and neck aches. In 2002, she re-engineered a more comfortable carrier and sold it from the back of her car. Within months, a dozen other mothers joined her. Today, the Ultimate Baby Wrap is sold at about 60 specialty stores and a number of big retailers, including Babies 'R Us online, for $39.95 to $49.95. "I thought I would be 100% satisfied staying home with my kids," she says. "I wasn't."
Ms. Caspi now runs Parents of Invention, a company offering licensing deals to parents who have an idea or prototype but don't want to manufacture the product. Her company is selling 11 different items, including a plastic pop-on toilet handle shaped like an alligator or hippo "to encourage flushing," a vibrating nursing pillow that fits overweight women and a key chain that dispenses antibacterial wipes.
Jill Avery-Zuleeg, Michele Free and Carmela Zamora-Robertson met when they worked in the same marketing group at Apple Computer. In the mid-'90s, they all got married and started having children.
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When Ms. Avery-Zuleeg's oldest child, Tanner, was nearly three, he emerged from his room dressed, but with his clothes on backwards and inside out. Beaming, he screamed: "I did it all by myself," and a new marketing concept was born.
Ms. Avery-Zuleeg, of Saratoga, Calif., recruited her former colleagues to start a line of videos, "All by Myself," to teach children independence. They took a lighting course from friends and used their children as actors. They have sold 80,000 of the getting-dressed tapes and 25,000 copies of a tape about children caring for pets.
These days the women work on the video business three nights a week from 9 until 1. "I'm always tired," Ms. Avery-Zuleeg says.
Writer Hilary Illick -- whose play, "Eve-olution," which she co-wrote with another mom, explores the dark side of motherhood -- says there are certainly some stay-at-home moms who "feel like going to mommy-and-me gymnastics class and doing potato-print drawings are fulfilling ways to spend their day." But many others need something more tangible and are constantly worrying, "what did I do today that was worthwhile?"
Studies suggest that the number of professional women opting out to become stay-at-home moms is on the rise. An informal Harvard Business School survey of 150 women done in 2001 found that only 38% of graduates in their child-bearing years are in the work force. 美国居家妈妈创业忙
塔玛拉?莫诺索夫 (Tamara Monosoff) 以前是一位商业顾问，曾在克林顿 (Clinton) 政府就过职，在女儿索非亚 (Sophia) 出生的时候，她辞去了工作回在家中。在照看女儿时，她发现索非亚老是把厕所卷纸拆开，弄得满地都是，而她不得不一次次将卷纸卷好，这让她十分心烦。
于是她发明了一种特殊的插销，防止索非亚把卷纸拆开。如今，她把这种插销以每个 6.95 美元的价格出售给父母们以及有宠物的人家。
莫诺索夫说，这种东西并不起眼。但它却能赚钱。她预计明年厕纸保护器以及其它产品的销售额将超过 100 万美元，其中包括印有鸭子和小狗图案的鞋子贴画，这种贴画能够帮助孩子分清左右脚。她的丈夫布拉德?克弗兹 (Brad Kofoed) 最近也辞去了软件销售的工作，回来和她一起打理生意。今年 3 月，他们雇了一位全职的保姆。
对于许多辞职在家照看孩子的妇女来说，当妈妈让发明成为一种必须。在日常照顾孩子的过程中，妈妈们需要解决许许多多的小问题，她们可以把这些灵光一闪的好主意、小发明转化成商品出售。这个月，莫诺索夫签了一份出书的合约，她要写一本关于如何激发妈妈们发明灵感的书，同时她还在经营著自己的公司以及网站，推销其她妈妈的产品。这个月的主打产品是由一位妈妈发明的 Bellybra ，一种怀孕妇女使用的内衣。
加州儿童用品零售商 Right Start 负责商品销售的副总裁贝蒂?金 (Betty Chin) 说，妈妈发明的异军突起最早出现在 90 年代末期，当时科罗拉多州的英语教师朱莉?艾格纳－克拉克 (Julie Aigner-Clark) 推出了一种名为 Baby Einstein 的录像带，里面有教育婴幼儿的美术品、古典音乐和诗歌。这种录像带推动了全美的妈妈们制作家庭教育录影带的热潮。如今 Baby Einstein 产品已被沃尔特 - 迪斯尼公司 (Walt Disney Co., DIS) 纳入麾下，预计今年的销售额将达到 1.65 亿美元。
丹尼丝?马歇尔 (Denise Marshall) 已经售出了超过两万只 Mac & Cool 快速冷却碗，以前她曾想尽各种办法让烫嘴的食物很快降下温度给孩子们食用，但最终都没能奏效，后来她设计出了这样一种快速冷却碗。“我过去总是用吹气的办法让食物冷却下来。”这位曾经的机械工程师这样说道。马歇尔的产品定位就是“为妈妈们而造”，她与另一位妈妈合伙经营业务，后者曾经是保险公司的风险经理，她的发明是一种防溢出的快餐杯。
苏珊?比彻姆 (Susan Beacham) 是芝加哥的一位银行家，专为有钱人家提供理财建议，她在这一行干了 18 年。 6 年前，她辞职回到家里，当起了全职妈妈。而这使她又找到了一个全新的市场。为了教育孩子们学会理财，她设计了一套有关理财的课程，并发明了一种小猪银行，小猪有四个不同的“胃”，分别存放用于储蓄、花费、捐赠和投资的现金。
One Step Ahead 的商品销售经理安德烈娅?加林斯基 (Andrea Galinski) 称，这种小猪银行在 One Step 卖得很好。她表示，在 One Step 销售的商品中，有 1/4 是由父母们发明的，其中多数是母亲。
莱恩?卡斯皮 (Laine Caspi) 曾经是洛杉矶一个自杀救助热线的咨询员，每天从半夜工作到第二天早上 8 点，然后在白天和小儿子一块儿玩耍。
她说：“某一天我意识到我不能同时兼顾到工作和孩子。”因此，她在 2001 年 11 月辞去了工作，当时她怀上了第二个孩子。那时婴儿背带常常弄得她腰酸背痛，于是在 2002 年，她重新设计了一种更舒适的婴儿背带，并开始对外出售。几个月内，不少母亲购买了这种背带。如今，这种 Ultimate Baby Wrap 背带在约 60 家专卖店以及多家大型零售店出售，包括 Babies 'R Us 网络商店，售价从 39.95 美元至 49.95 美元不等，。“我以为我会安安心心地在家带孩子，”她说，“可是我没有。”
卡斯皮如今经营著 Parents of Invention ，公司和那些有创意或是创新产品、但又不想自己生产产品的父母们签署协议，获取他们的授权生产出售这些产品。她的公司目前出售 11 种不同的产品，包括一种形状像短吻鳄或是河马的塑料马桶冲水手柄，可以鼓励孩子们便后冲水，还有一种震动护理枕头，适合于较胖的妇女使用，还有一种装有抗菌纸巾的□匙链。
吉尔?埃弗里 - 楚勒格 (Jill Avery-Zuleeg) 、米凯莱?弗里 (Michele Free) 和卡梅拉?萨莫拉 - 罗伯逊 (Carmela Zamora-Robertson) 曾同在苹果电脑 (Apple Computer) 的市场部共事。在 90 年代中期，她们相继结婚并开始生儿育女。
当埃弗里 - 楚勒格最大的孩子坦纳 (Tanner) 快 3 岁的时候，有一天他从房间里出来，身上的衣服不仅前后穿反了，连里外也都穿错了，他却兴高采烈地大叫：“这都是我自己穿的。”就这样，一个新的营销点子浮现在她脑海中。
埃弗里 - 楚勒格将以前的同事招集在一起，开始制作系列录影带“我自己做” (All by Myself) ，教孩子们学会独立生活。她们从朋友那学会了灯光设计，并让自己的孩子充当演员。她们制作的有关学习穿衣的录影带卖出了 80,000 套，教孩子照顾宠物的录影带卖出了 25,000 套。
那些日子为了制作录影带，她们一周有三个晚上要从 9 点干到凌晨 1 点。埃弗里 - 楚勒格说：“我总是感到很累。”
希拉里?伊利克 (Hilary Illick) 和另一位妈妈合著了一本名为《 Eve-olution 》的书，探索母亲们所不为人知的一面，她说，毫无疑问有一些居家妈妈“喜欢参加妈咪健身训练班，或是画画什么的，认为这样就能让生活变得充实。”但是也有其她很多的妈妈们需要更多实实在在的东西，她们不停地问自己，“我今天做了什么有价值的事情呢？”
研究表明，越来越的职业女性辞职回家当起了居家妈妈。据哈佛商学院 (Harvard Business School) 在 2001 年对 150 名妇女进行的非正式调查显示，处于生育年龄的女毕业生中，只有 38% 的人仍在外工作。
