Those who have a child in daycare are most likely to have experienced the exact same situation as Pia Callesen did with her son. Many times when she’d show up to pick up her son he’d have someone else’s pacifier in his mouth and his would be nowhere to be found. Determined to find a better way, she shopped around just to find there were no personalized pacifier options. That’s when she decided to do something about it. In 2004 she created Navnesutten®.
When Pia was looking to expand, Kim and Carol Pedersen took on the task of helping her. Rather than expanding on her own, Kim and Carol became distributors and they sell her pacifiers from their own website at MyPacifier.com.
How did you and your husband stumble upon Pia and her personalized pacifiers?
Pia is the daughter-in-law of Kim’s Danish cousin.
What made the two of you want to take on distributing them here in the US?
In 2005 Pia contacted us to inquire about expanding her business to the USA. We initially offered to help them with the paperwork and basic business registration info. After many phone calls with them, we decided it might be easier for them if we became their distributor. We also felt their idea had great potential for success in the USA and ye olde American Dream started flashing before our eyes! That’s how we ended up becoming their first distributor in a country outside Denmark.
How many different styles and colors of pacifiers do you carry? What are the maximum lines and characters available on a personalized pacifier?
Currently we have 43 different choices to choose from. These include silicone or latex nipples, several different nipple styles, and a variety of color combinations. When we first started out, we only had 4 choices, boy and girl colors in silicone or latex. The maximum length for text is 20 spaces and 2 lines.
What sets your product apart from other products on the market?
We have more color and style choices than any of the ‘copycat’ competitors. Besides being the original personalized pacifier business (Pia invented them!), our pacifiers use the highest quality, award-winning pacifiers available. Our competitors use cheaply made pacifiers and they don’t have an imprinting process as good as ours (we know this from side-by-side comparisons by both our customers and ourselves).
What are some of your long term goals for MyPacifier.com?
We’d like to see MyPacifier Personalized Pacifiers become the go-to baby shower gift in America! From customer response we know already that they are “the hit of the party” whenever and wherever they are given, but not enough folks know about them yet. So the goal is to get as many Americans aware of them as possible. As far as the business, eventually one of our sons may take over the business. Our youngest, Skyler (20), has shown an interest in the business and helped us a great deal.
Did you and your husband have any previous experience that you were able to bring into the business?
We are both long-term city government employees. Starting this business was a very new experience for us. Kim worked for the business tax division of the City of Fremont for years, so he had knowledge on how to start a business from there. Kim also founded The Monorail Society (5500 worldwide members-www.Monorails.org) and maintains his organization as a business, but it’s quite different than MyPacifier.com.
When you look back, is there anything you wish you’d done differently?
Marketing was a big unknown for us. We learned through trial and error where to advertise and what did and didn’t work. We’re still trying new things and learning from our mistakes, and sometimes those mistakes are expensive! We are constantly making changes to the website, trying to make it as customer friendly as possible.
What are some of the things you’ve learned from running your business?
We’ve learned if we want to be successful, we have to put 110% into the company. Customer satisfaction and quick responses to customer inquiries are very important. We pretty much work 7 days a week, rarely taking time off for ourselves.
Was there a resource in particular that you’ve found especially helpful? What was it and how has it helped?
Many of our customers are business owners as well. We’ve learned to network through them and exchange ideas. Our customers also have great ideas. They love our product so much, and they are kind enough to take the time to write to us and give us their ideas.
Do you have any advice for the potential entrepreneurs that might be reading this?
A catchy business name is important. Getting a good URL and setting up a user friendly website is important as well. Customer service is very important, as we’ve all had experiences with bad customer service and we know how that certainly doesn’t help the company represented. Don’t be afraid to ask questions of all sorts of people and business owners, pool all the information in your efforts for success!
AnnaLaura Brown on July 18th, 2008 at 7:31 pm
what a great idea. Who couldn’t use one of these?
cassy on July 18th, 2008 at 8:30 pm
Great idea! Nice to know they have a good quality pacifiers here.
Goodluck!