Be it modern baby care brand Coterie (whose compostable wipes earned a Good Housekeeping seal) or Rebelstork, the B Corp augmenting gear searches for busy parents — baby goods are looking more and more sustainable.
On the clothing front, women’s brands like innerwear label Oddobody are dipping into the sustainable children’s category. Meanwhile, online resale for home goods — from the likes of Kaiyo and Chairish — is gaining steam and the baby resale category is no exception.
And the market is growing up a bit thanks to technology.
Rebelstork, a certified B Corp technology-driven baby gear marketplace launched “Rev” on Wednesday, a first-of-its kind baby gear AI pricing technology that provides an instant and accurate resale offer for top-quality baby goods. The Toronto-based company counts more than $5.5 million in funding to date since launching in 2019, has expanded to Vancouver, and will launch its full suite of offerings in the U.S. by April 2022.
Rev provides three core benefits to parents on the hunt: search recognition (for more than 10,000 high-quality baby and kid gear models including high chairs, cribs, breast pumps and the like), demand tracking (across brand and model) and price intelligence (assessing real-time market value).
A range of “curated” overstock, open box and high-quality used baby gear proliferate the site. All goods are quality checked and rated by a team of trained experts, and new arrivals are listed daily.
To use it, parents can “Get My Rev” on Rebelstork.com, and select their chosen selling or shopping category. After entering details like brand, model, condition and sale timing, they are given an instant estimated resale value.
“There has been a quick and noticeable shift in today’s parents’ purchasing habits, especially among Millennials and newer parents. These young families are eager to provide the best for their babies, but are feeling overwhelmed by the seemingly endless assortment available, and concurrently wanting more transparency behind their household items,” Emily Hosie, founder and chief executive officer of Rebelstork, told WWD. “They are thinking universally — about how their purchases will affect the newest generation that they have brought into the world. These parents care how the products are made, if they are sustainably sourced, if they are made by environmentally conscious, impact driven companies and where their product is going afterward.”
Calling the Rev customer discerning, curious and empowered, Hosie believes “above all, our customer is busy.” For time and resource-strapped parents, investments have to make sense in the long run for growing humans.
Norwegian children’s premium products company Stokke (known for convertible seating covers, transport, travel, learning and nursery goods) has been on a roll, introducing the latest version of its Xplory stroller in January.
In 2021, Stokke acquired a German baby carrier company called Limas and later bought Mukako, an Italian brand that makes multiactivity play tables for children. Despite its sleek aesthetic, the company — whose goods are carried at Bergdorf Goodman, Nordstrom, Target and Bloomingdale’s — will celebrate its 50th anniversary in 2022.
Some of the company’s bestsellers include the five-height expandable Tripp Trapp High Chair (courtesy of designer Peter Opsvik who designed the original model in the ’70s). It retails for $269 and is made from cultivated beech and oak wood from Europe, and it’s free of toxic chemicals and formaldehyde.
In another swoop for parental approval, there’s modern baby care brand Coterie. Launched in May, the brand’s compostable wipes (with approval from the Environmental Working Group for chemical safety), are made with Lenzing’s Veocel Lyocell fibers, sourced from sustainably managed forests with Forest Stewardship Council certification.
Founded in 2018, Coterie openly prods its existence on its website, asking “Does the world need another diaper company?” With disposable diapers amounting to a $71 billion a year industry, which in turn, creates billions of landfilled disposable diapers a year — the keyword here is “sustainable solutions.”
As Coterie founder and CEO Frank Yu said, “We’re on a mission to revitalize the baby care space while setting new industry standards for performance and sustainability. Our partnership with Veocel is a testament to our continued investment and dedication to sustainable innovation, and we’re proud to have designed another high-performing product that provides the perfect combination of effective cleaning, enhanced skin health and efficiency for the environment.”