Netflix for baby clothes

I love the look and feel of the landing page, the typography is concise and clear.<p>That said a couple of landing page suggestions:<p>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!"<p>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.<p>Hope you guys crush it, sending along to my wife :)

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.<p>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.

As the Father of a 19 month old I can only say this is a complete rip-off.<p>Craig's list, friends and family, birthdays, holidays, garage sales, second hand stores, 50% off coupons, the list goes on and on.<p>$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.

To everyone posting a variant of, "Ew, I don't care if it's been laundered.. who wants to use pants that were on some weird stranger's baby?" .. I have to ask: Do you bring your own sheets and towels when you stay in a hotel?

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).<p>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".<p><a href="http://www.bebarang.com/" rel="nofollow">http://www.bebarang.com/</a><p><a href="http://www.annarbor.com/business-review/netflix-for-baby-clothes-u-m-lands-nomination-for-entrepreneur-magazines-college-entrepreneur-of-the/" rel="nofollow">http://www.annarbor.com/business-review/netflix-for-baby-clo...</a>

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: <a href="http://www.egg-baby.com/lightweight-knit-layette-p1ck400-lgrey.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.egg-baby.com/lightweight-knit-layette-p1ck400-lgr...</a> It is currently selling for $42.25.<p>Perhaps it's a <i>little</i> expensive, but I believe "plum" here is not just a random word, but is referring to the quality of the goods being rented.<p>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".

The smart thing is the marketing comparison to Netflix. I get the service immediately.<p>I actually think a better market is offering a cloth diaper service, but I'm sure the USPS would have some issues with those packages!

Marketing question:<p>Any problems with using somebody else's trademark in your service's tagline?<p>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?<p>(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.)

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).<p>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.<p>I likely won't use this service unless the price drops although I appreciate the idea and the utility. Nice site too.

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.

Your market is probably people who garage sale for baby clothes - or go to second-hand shops and don't care if their kids are wearing hand-me-downs.<p>However, those people are finding full outfits for $0.25<p>Will the same people pay $16.95 per month for this? Not in my opinion.<p>We buy new clothes for our kids. We hand-down clothes. But we were never comfortable putting our kids in hand-me-down clothes because we see what kids do to clothes.<p>It seems like a pretty narrow niche.

As a new father of an 11 month old (and a very generous family that won't stop finding cute outfits), I have a few thoughts:<p>1. Just read your FAQ page, and it says if my return package is over 13 oz, I need to take it to the post office. While this sounds trivial initially, how many people know how much their packages weigh? I don't have a postal scale handy, so would I always have to go to the post office to ensure I can get my package out?<p>2. As numerous people have commented here, you have a lot of competition just with family alone. Granted not everybody's family will be as generous as mine. But we've bought a small percentage of clothes for our little guy compared to our family buying every cute outfit they see at Kohls or Target, and a lot of hand me downs from a little cousin a year old than our little guy.<p>Your bio on your site seems to suggest that you haven't had your baby yet (unless I've misread it). I wonder if, once you have your baby, you might realize that you yourself have no need for your service (if your family is anything like mine).<p>Then again, maybe this will take off with a small niche. Nobody can predict the future, right? :)

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.<p>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.<p>A similar toy rental business was on Shark Tank this season: <a href="http://www.toygaroo.com/blog/?p=1734" rel="nofollow">http://www.toygaroo.com/blog/?p=1734</a> <a href="http://inthesharktank.com/2011/03/shark-tank-premiers-biggest-offer/" rel="nofollow">http://inthesharktank.com/2011/03/shark-tank-premiers-bigges...</a><p>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.<p>Best of luck.

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.<p>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.

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.)

Holy cow. We're expecting our first, and this just looks like an amazing idea.<p>You should totally cross-market with the diaper services.

The pricing is a bit confusing. You can go with the 7 outfits plan however you can still only return one of those outfits per month before you get dinged.<p>The alloted shipments should scale with the plan imo. If I'm on the 7 outfit plan I should be able to cycle all 7 of those outfits within say 3 months as part of the plan's price.<p>You may need to raise the monthly to cover this, but at least it feels more inclusive and less nickle and dime. Just my opinion though.

[I don't have kids] Nice idea, but I had to crunch the numbers. I'm not sure this service is cost effective. Take the 7 outfits plan at $49/month. Since you can only return these outfits at the end of 3 months that translates into $21/outfit over the 3 months. And if you make 3 returns within the 3 months, that effectively translates to $24.4/outfit. A brand new designer outfit from <a href="http://www.egg-baby.com/" rel="nofollow">http://www.egg-baby.com/</a> will set you back by $40/outfit (probably lower, if you hunt for a good deal). So for gasp, 84 outfits a year, renting outfits through this service will set you back by $2049/year. Buying 84 new outfits will cost you $3360/year. So renting is cheaper by 39%. But, if OTOH, at the end of the year, you were to launder (Cost to you: $200; worst case) these outfits that you've bought and sell them on Ebay at 30% (worst case) of the cost, you'd net ~$800, bring down your total cost to $2560 for buying new clothes yourself.<p>Plum: 84 outfits. $2049/year DIY: 84 outfits $40/outfit. $3360/year. Launder them at the end of the year. -$200. Sell them for $1000 on craigslist or Ebay. $2560/year.

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.

Its a great market (massive numbers of babies born every year, 4m+ in the US alone) and it is not one that a lot of entrepreneurs automatically think of, so anything that can get traction is clearly going to do fairly well. The problem with this particular model (and this is only from my own personal experience), is that you get baby clothes (both new and old) as gifts for a lot of different sources (friends, family etc) and quickly most parents regardless of household income come to view baby clothes as a disposable or at least very low value commodity and thus renting expensive "boutique" clothes is perhaps moving towards to the "niche" end of the market... although I definitely, think if you kill the execution you could do something that made a bit of money.

This is a great idea, and there is a market for this, as anyone with a baby will tell you. But have you done any customer development? As others have mentioned, you have a lot of competition.<p>First you have relatives. They buy lots of new clothes for you. Then you have consignment shops for lots of basic items, which as a new parent, you are suddenly very aware of. Finally, you have the parents themselves, who can usually afford to splurge on a nice outfit here or there, after the bulk of clothing's been supplied by #1 and #2.<p>I just don't see a burning need here that will get you across the chasm.

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.<p>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.

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 :)<p>Having said that, here is some constructive criticism:<p>1 - If you subscribe, what kind of commitment are you making? Can you cancel the service @ any time?<p>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.

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.

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.

How does this compare to <a href="http://www.thredup.com/" rel="nofollow">http://www.thredup.com/</a> ? Anybody know of any others in this space?

While I was in bschool at Michigan, a few classmates were working on an almost identical business called Bebaroo. Not sure where it went, and as a single male with no children, I have no idea about the viability of the model. That said, a good friend of mine who is a mom said that the idea was flawed to her because she could go to Target and outfit her kid for $10 in brand new clothing.

I agree with some of the new parents that this service is essentially useless to me if I get the first 2 years of clothing for free thanks to family and friends. You might want to think about cannibalizing this by allowing my friends to instead give me a 'gift certificate' good for however many months of clothing from your service.

&#62;To keep that fresh-off-the-line feeling, our bundles are packed with a sprig of organic lavender in a muslin pouch.<p>Great care seems to be taken with the laundering process to reduce allergens and be generally baby friendly... And then a hepatotoxic flower, allergen, and estrogen mimic is thrown in.

Reminds me of Manpacks: <a href="http://manpacks.com/" rel="nofollow">http://manpacks.com/</a>

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.

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.

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?

Sorry, but WAY overpriced.

&#62;We donate anything in less-than-perfect condition to foster care.<p>Ouch. Perhaps it could just say 'donated to those in need' without calling out foster kids as a second class?

See also, thredup.com

Regardless of the first version sales pitch, I'd totally use it if I had a kid.<p>Just to contribute some valuable info.

seems kinda pricey. renting 2 sets for $16/mo. I could hop on to target and buy 2 sets for the same price and I get to keep them till they outgrow them. I guess they need to deal with the overhead costs on shipping + cleaning + just plain gets old or torn.<p>Can't see the value in this.

I'd like to see more info in the FAQ. For example, what sizes do they go up to?

Another is Netflix for toys.<p>Theres a Netflix for everything