Like a Zappos for new parents, the six person company sells things to new moms keeping in mind the following strictures, “Are the products safe?” “Are the products useful?”
Ecomom targets LOHAS or the “lifestyles, health and sustainability” market, which CEO Jody Sherman pegs at $300 million a year. Says Sherman, “If given the opportunity every mom would make the decision to purchase a product that was healthier for their child or safer.”
Likening themselves to the Diapers.com “Green” section, or Amazon Babies, Sherman says there’s no service currently curating parenting products like EcoMom, which with a network of over 13,000 mommy bloggers writing product reviews, aims to be the primary resource for parents shopping for their families. “I hope to one day be as big as Zappos,” says Sherman.
But while Zappos is focused on shoes, EcoMom provides a variety of products, currently stocking an inventory of over 2000 childcare-related items in an attempt to apply the traditional ecommerce model to the social/content driven web.
This financing is a big deal for the bootstrapped startup, which went live last February and initially began with shipments of products on pallets to Sherman’s bedroom. While EcoMom is currently not-profitable, Sherman expects to be in the black before the end of next year, “This money will allow us to grow faster,” he says, planning on using the money for site redevelopment, key hires and acquiring new customers.
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Authors: Alexia Tsotsis