Making Money From Your Kids
Does your toddler wear perfume? Should your newborn eat organic? And has your four-year-old been to the gym lately?
Moms and dads a generation ago might have laughed at these questions, but today there is a booming market for products and services targeting affluent parents willing to spend freely on their kids.
Armed with more information and choices than ever before, modern parents are some of the most demanding customers in the marketplace. Opportunities abound for entrepreneurs who can meet their exacting standards.
“They’re the most well-informed consumer group that you can look at,” says Simon May, one of the four dads behind Bloom, a maker of high-end baby chairs that are both stylish and functional. Bloom’s ovoidal chairs, which retail for $180 to $500, can adjust as kids grow, so parents who buy them for infants can keep using them as the kids get older.
Not only are many parents today insisting on the best for their kids, they are willing to pay for it. U.S. spending on food, clothing, personal care, entertainment, and reading for kids reached $115.6 billion in 2006 and is expected to top $143 billion by 2010, according to New York market researcher Packaged Facts.
One reason parents are spending more may be that more are gainfully employed: 53.5% of married couples in 2006 had both spouses working, according to the U.S. Census Bureau, an increase of 1.4 percentage points from the previous year.
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Photo by Bloom.
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