Ouachita Baptist University graduate Brett Parker and his wife Stephanie pitched their business on “Shark Tank” and left with a deal
Necessity is the mother of invention, and in Stephanie and Brett Parker’s case, necessity was the mother of a multi-million dollar company.
The Parker’s first-born, Charlotte, slept wonderfully through the night when swaddled, but once she had outgrown her swaddle she would wake up every 15 minutes. After trying many tricks and products on the market, Stephanie, desperate and sleep-deprived, created her own solution.
Stephanie found that a baby jolts awake as a result of the Moro reflex, when the baby feels as if it is falling. “I found that the reason a baby startles is because they can’t feel their edges,” she said, explaining that when a baby is in a womb-like environment, it is able to stretch out and feel the edges of its perimeter.
Stephanie created a wearable blanket that imitates a womb-like environment, but allows the baby to safely roll over and have full range of movement.
“Although my sewing skills were very lacking, I did what it took to make that solution possible for [my daughter],” Stephanie said. The first time her daughter wore the pajama-like garment, she slept 12 hours straight. “When I found it worked for our daughter, I tried it on friends who had babies,” she said.
The Parkers called the wearable blanket the Zipadee-Zip, and it became the first product of their company, Sleeping Baby.
The Parkers made careful investments in the early stages of the company. Their goal for the Sleeping Baby brand was to gross $200 a month so Stephanie could stay home with her daughter. They initially invested $700 in the company — $500 on a website and $200 on fabric.
Before they moved forward, Stephanie vetted the product at a vendor fair. The Zipadee-Zip was so well received that Stephanie called her web developer from the fair and told him to go live with the site. They made $200 within the first five minutes.
As the Parkers received orders, they bought more fabric. They kept seeing the orders come in and the site’s popularity grow without spending a dime on marketing.
The Parkers utilized social media as a way to talk directly to their customers. When they had a new product or a new print, they asked their Facebook followers what they thought about it. If there wasn’t a big enough response, they didn’t develop the product, Brett said. Social media “is everything,” he said, “our community, our customers — I call a lot of them friends.”
The Sleeping Baby Facebook page evolved into “a community of mothers to share and feel part of something bigger than Zipadee-Zip,” Brett said. Through the page, moms share everything from photos of their babies wearing Zipadee-Zips to personal stories — and among the community members sharing stories was Stephanie, who had a miscarriage in the midst of the company’s success and found it impossible to carry on with business as usual. When Stephanie reached out to the community, she was overwhelmed with support from moms who had been through the same thing. The outpouring of encouragement helped Stephanie heal, and the Parkers later found out they were pregnant again.
In the Tank
Two and a half years into the company, Sleeping Baby had grossed more than $1 million entirely through e-commerce on Zipadeezip.com. The Parkers appeared on ABC’s “Shark Tank” seeking $200,000 in exchange for a 10 percent stake in the company.
“It’s intense. It’s super intense,” Brett said. “You may see six minutes of what is shown. We were in there for over an hour with no break, and that’s just a minimum.”
He added that some entrepreneurs are in the tank for up to six hours.
“Those sharks are in there looking for their next $20 million deal. They are business people,” he said.
“They have pretty good instincts,” Stephanie said, “You better not go in and have the wrong intentions. They hate that. We genuinely went in there wanting a deal. [The producers] said you need to make sure you’re not over-valuing the company so that when you’re in front of [the sharks], you’re not talking about that the whole time.”
Instead of criticism, the Parkers received positive feedback from the sharks.
“I think you’re doing everything right,” serial inventor and “Queen of QVC” Lori Greiner told them. She offered the Parkers $200,000 for a 25 percent stake in the company.
Shark Kevin O’Leary, a Canadian venture capitalist, was also interested in investing, and felt connected to the Sleeping Baby brand due to its being almost “identical” to the business his grandfather started when he moved to America.
“It’s hard to listen to your story without getting emotional, it’s so powerful,” O’Leary said.
O’Leary offered the Parkers $200,000 for a 20 percent stake in the company — a straight equity deal which is out of the norm for the royalty-seeking shark who has been ironically dubbed as “Mr. Wonderful.”
“I should pay you to actually take that deal because that would be a first ever,” Greiner said.
“This is my old family business all over again, except with people that have figured it out in a new world,” O’Leary said.
Daymond John, founder and president of FUBU, matched Kevin’s offer at $200,000 for a 20 percent stake in the company, with a plan to try out retail.
“You guys are the American dream come true,” shark Mark Cuban, owner of the Dallas Mavericks, said. “Because everybody out there now knows that your back can be against the wall, you can suffer personal tragedy, and with $700, you can be standing right there, and already have a great business in place,” he said, “So, while I’m out, I can’t applaud you enough. You guys are amazing.”
Shark Robert Herjavec, technology mogul and son of an immigrant factory worker, echoed Cuban’s sentiments. “You’re the proof. All you need is drive. You need ambition,” he said before respectfully bowing out.
Ultimately, the Parkers landed on a deal with John for $200,000 for a 20 percent stake in the company.
The Sleeping Baby inventory — which the Parkers hoped was enough to last for nine months — lasted four days after the show aired.
The Future of Sleeping Baby
Today, Sleeping Baby is a multi-million dollar company, and the Parkers have not strayed away from their original model.
“We are listening to our customers,” Stephanie said, “We get awesome ideas [from our customers]. That is how we gauge our growth. We want to be the heartbeat of our customers,” she said, “Their desires are at the forefront of what we do.”
Social entrepreneurship is also at the forefront of what the Parkers do. “We have a heart for helping people,” Brett said, “We want to make sure the money is toward a solution. Why not tie [the product] around a cause and help [the cause] make money if they are going to sell anyway?”
The Parkers recently inked a deal with the National Fallen Firefighters Foundation after receiving feedback from customers whose spouses were fallen firefighters.
“These people are buying our product regardless, and we are incredibly in debt to them,” Brett said.
For every fire truck-printed Zipadee-Zip — a design the customers picked after Stephanie vetted it on the Facebook page — 10 percent of the proceeds will go to the National Fallen Firefighters Foundation.
“If your focus and passion is on the people instead of your pocket, you put yourself in a better position to be successful,” Stephanie said.
The Parkers advise future entrepreneurs to test their proof of concept before spending a lot of money.
“Sometimes the market will tell you ‘no’ and save you a ton of money and you have to listen,” Brett said. “[There are] going to be people who have been there and are successful that will tell you what you need to hear, not what you want to hear. They have navigated water that you haven’t. Every day is uncharted waters. Every day is a new day. [It is] exciting, but can be scary, too.”
“Never be discouraged by your mistakes,” Stephanie said. “Success is experiencing failure after failure and maintaining your enthusiasm, because you’re going to fail a lot when you own your own business. Every day.”