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As questions about the history of our brand arise in the GroVia Families Facebook Group, I’ve noticed something: I don’t share the story of just how our company and brand came to be very often.
I often reflect on just how far we’ve come since the earliest days of our company, but the whole narrative is not something I generally share. It’s not because I’m not proud of it, it’s just that I am someone who is always looking forward. The excitement of the future is what drives me and our whole team. Our early years laid a foundation that was so strong and unyielding that it’s easy to forget just how important those formative years really were. I lost my corporate job after 9/11, when the recession started, and stayed home with our daughter for the first several months. Then we discovered we were expecting our second baby! I started researching cloth diapers for our new baby since our first baby had had frequent rash issues in disposables. This led me to concept an online store business that would focus on natural parenting products like cloth diapers, slings, and wood toys.
When did you first realize that this GroVia thing "was real" and was going to take off as a business? What was going through your mind at the time?
When we relocated from being a home-based business to our first store/warehouse location almost 7 years ago. My mind was still in tact, though local customer feed-back and the amount of goods we were bringing in to the store made it clear that things were progressing forward , but still in a timely way. What I mean is, we didn't get big-headed or let things get away from us that we couldn't make clear decisions on what was best for our family and our customers.
We take great pride is showcasing GroVia's product with fantastic lifestyle images. A day long photo shoot with babies can be comical, exhausting, and even stressful. Getting that "perfect shot" sometimes means crawling on the floor, holding props in strange positions, or even hanging precariously over the top of an 8 ft ladder!
We've been incredibly fortunate to work with some amazing photographers including, Janie Osborne, Rob Wilke, and Jessica Galligani. Yesterday's shoot was a lifestyle studio session with Janie. Mission Impossible: Get as many cute photos of 10 week old North in a GroVia Newborn AIO. North was up for the challenge.....or should I say WAS a challenge :-)
WE ARE PROUD TO ANNOUNCE: The Natural Baby Company has been awarded a place on the 2011 Inc. 500|5000 list, Inc.’s annual ranking of the fastest-growing private companies in America! The list debuted in 1981 as a ranking of the 100 fastest-growing private companies in the U.S. The following year, it expanded to the Inc. 500 and, in 2007, they inaugurated the Inc. 5000. Through each evolution, Inc. has sought to recognize and to celebrate the creativity, dedication, and hard work that entrepreneurs put into building their companies.
Kim Ormsby of Bozeman transformed a desire to take better care of her babies' backsides into a multi-million dollar business, one that has made her Montana's 2010 Small Business Person of the Year.
The award, given by the U.S. government's Small Business Administration, had Ormsby in Washington, D.C., the last week of May being honored for her unique brand of GroVia diapers and other baby care products. She calls her business The Natural Baby Company, selling her products from a Bozeman storefront and via the Internet—and business is booming.
You can't just flip a switch. The Natural Baby Company discovered firsthand that rebranding is an intensive process.
When we launched Gro Baby, our modern cloth diaper line in April 2009, we had no idea how much it would transform our business model. We started The Natural Baby Company in 2005 with three product lines--WonderWraps, Pocket Change and DreamEze. Now our successful little company, with a mere 50-plus retailers, was about to experience a boom in business.
When we launched Gro Baby, our modern cloth diaper line in April 2009, we had no idea how much it would transform our business model. We started The Natural Baby Company in 2005 with three product lines--WonderWraps, Pocket Change and DreamEze. Now our successful little company, with a mere 50-plus retailers, was about to experience a boom in business.
Within months of the Gro Baby launch, we had wholesale distributors on three continents and were supplying 500-plus retailers worldwide. It was abundantly clear that the Gro Baby brand name would outsell our other products, and it was starting to define our company. Customers and retailers no longer knew us by our company name, The Natural Baby Company. They knew us as Gro Baby.
Kim Ormsby, CEO and President of The Natural Baby Company, has been named SBA’s 2010 Montana Small Business Person of the Year. Ormsby originally founded the company as “Montana’s Diaper Store” in 2003 as a small online retail store operating from the laundry room in her home. Montana’s Diaper Store grew each year and today, it is known as The Natural Baby Company.
Ormsby was among a number of outstanding businesses and business advocates in Montana who were recognized for their achievements at a celebration in Gallatin Gateway sponsored by the regional office of the US Small Business Administration.
It's only natural to want to make the world a better place for your child. These 8 women did something about it — from designing eco-friendly diapers to creating an environmentally safe, completely ingestible toy cleaner.
THE CHALLENGE Find a convenient alternative to disposable diapers — a major household contributor to landfills.
