The Baby's Brew reaches more parents using Wayflyer's funding for inventory
https://www.thebabysbrew.com/
Alaina Moulton founded The Baby's Brew to help more parents stay active and outdoors when they have a young child. With their cordless bottle warmer, they are "cutting the chord" and solving one of the biggest pain points of young children.
Wayflyer has been able to help Alaina to grow The Baby's Brew by allowing her to take quick action when she needed finance for inventory. Wayflyer was also able to help Alaina increase the efficiency of her marketing by using Wayflyer's Marketing Insights to find areas where she could change her campaigns.
Alaina is now helping thousands of families to stay active and explore the outdoors whilst keeping their babies happy and healthy.
Here's her story.
Alaina Moulton's husband was in the military. Their life together was mobile, active, and outdoor. So when they learned that they were going to become parents, one of the things that Alaina looked for was a portable, cordless, milk warmer. She searched every corner of the internet... and couldn't find one. It didn't exist. She checked the patent office. Nothing. And so The Baby's Brew was founded, creating the first ever battery powered bottle warmer.
Hitting the ground running
Once Alaina had the idea for her portable, cordless, milk warmer, there were a lot of hurdles she needed to get over. First she had to find a great designer and manufacturer. Then came the first 3D-printed prototypes and the first functioning model of her new product.
Long before launching her first product , Alaina had started to build a following online using platforms like Instagram and by investing in her SEO work. By sharing baby and pregnancy-related content, she already had a reputation. This allowed her to hit the ground running when she launched The Baby's Brew.
After just a year into her business, she had built an email subscriber list of 30,000 and a text subscriber list of 20,000. All made up of people interested in her products.‍‍
The big leap
As The Baby's Brew grew, Alaina faced a new challenge: how to meet demand. She had already invested a lot of money into product development, and so finding the funding to make inventory purchases was a real constraint on their growth. Demand for their product was always greater than the amount of inventory they could buy and they sold out seven time. Alaina was also uneasy about making her customers wait: "pre-orders" meant she was losing business.
Despite the proven demand for their product, banks would not provide the $260,000 that Alaina needed to make the step up. Discussions with an investor had also stalled. The company had looked at a range of other funding providers but never liked the terms.
"It was like everyone was trying to make it not worth it," she says. As if it were meant to be, the day that Alaina broke off talks with the investor was the day she got a cold call from Wayflyer.
Working with Wayflyer
"It was way different than with a bank," says Alaina. "Because they want to work with you. They understood the situation immediately. They are flexible, happy to change the rates and percentages to better suit our situation – 'Tell us what you need', they said. And it was fast. I had the money within a week. That's allowed us to satisfy orders immediately, and it's helping us extend our product line. We're now placing orders for 15,000 units of three different products."
"But the other big difference is their marketing insights, which I love getting. 'Switch these traffic ads to conversion,' they said one month. When we did that our conversion rate skyrocketed from 2.9% to 5%. I love being able to dig into my own ads and being able to challenge my marketing agency. We speak every two weeks. They even sent me flowers. For me they're like a partner."
Alaina and The Baby's Brew is now able to satisfy customer orders immediately and are expanding their product line. As they continue to grow, they can help free more parents from being tied down by the chord of traditional bottle warmers, helping more families get outside and enjoy an active life.
Increase in conversion rate