How to Start a Business Selling Baby Products Online?

Growing demand for quality baby products could be a chance for starting a baby products business and selling those online with the help of an online store. You can launch a company and start a small business in profitable baby products at your home.

How to Start Baby Products Business?

Starting a business never meant that you will be selling products at a brick and mortal shop.

Expenses in renting physical venues, employing people for certain roles based on their level of skills and experience, and creating a showroom or corner for your potential customers are increasing over years.

Therefore, you should consider starting your own small business online and lower the expenses with social media marketing and search engine optimization(SEO).

Find a niche baby product category

Niche refers to a specialized segment of a market for a particular kind or service or product.

Identifying a business niche and starting by taking smaller steps into the field always work. Focusing on one specific niche at a time contributes to effectiveness of your research at the beginning.

Research baby products in online marketplaces, baby products websites or at physical stores near you to focus on a specific category of baby products.

You can take advantage of using social media to understand your potential audience and parents' preferences while they are looking for baby products for sale.

While parents from Los Angelos are looking for organic baby clothes, parents in Florida look for skin cares for babies.

Studying on a specific niche also means that you are analyzing your potential competitors in that specific niche in terms of their product offerings, pricing strategies, and customer reviews.

You can understand how those baby product brands reach new customers and learn closing the deals with campaigns.

Last but not least, you can also define organic keywords while you are searching for baby products on search engine result pages (SERP).

Baby product categories

Here is a list of baby products that you can take a look at:

• Newborn baby products

• Natural baby products

• Organic baby clothing for baby skin

• Safe baby products

• 6-12 months baby products

• Baby toys for 1 year old

• Baby seats for cars

• Baby diets

• Baby bath products

• Pregnant clothing

• Baby tools

You can find more specific baby products for sale in your market vertical during your research.

The best baby products to sell

• Organic baby clothes

• Baby booster seats

• Baby bottles

• Disposable diapers

• Hypoallergenic baby diaper wipes

• Diaper backpack

• Baby healing ointment

• No-touch forehead thermometer

• White-noise machine

• Teething toys

• Car seats

• Breast milk storage bags

• Bedding

• Baby-related crafts

• Stroller fans

Plan your business model

There are many types of business models to consider but only a few suits best to your needs and plans as an online entrepreneur.

Selling baby products to consumers as a single business owner is possible with the following types of business models:

Direct-to-consumer (D2C)

Direct-to-consumer business model refers to selling products directly to consumers through a website or physical store.

Since you have full control over how your products are presented and marketed, you have full over the pricing and profit margins.

Dropshipping baby products

Dropshipping baby care products enable you grow your business with less capital investment.

Fulfilling orders, keeping tracks of inventory and shipping to consumers might turn into a time-consuming and expensive process. Dropshipping business model removes uncertain expenses from your road.

Comparing to the traditional direct-to-consumer business models, dropshipping prevents investing in inventory upfront and paying for products wholesale without making any sale. Furthermore, scaling business without woryying about storage and shipping is not possible.

Dropshipping suppliers you can take a look to find baby care products:

• Alibaba

• Modalyst

• Spocket

Best baby products to dropship

• Disposable baby products: diapers, nappies, wipes, diaper bags

• Sustainable baby products: food storage, washable wipes, reusable diapers, reusable cotton pads

• Safety baby products: corner guard, safety locks, plug protectors, furniture anchor, infant earmuffs

• Baby and kids toys: tummy time playmat, teething toys, sensory toys, pram toys, bath toys

• Baby gifts: keepsake box, moneybox, first-year record book, milestone cards, gift hamper

• Pregnancy and maternity: Pregnancy relief tape, over the belly leggings, milestone bump cards, baby shower party supplies, gender reveal party supplies

• Baby clothing, apparel and accessories: sleeping bag, swaddle, dummy/pacifier chain, muslins, outfit with headbands
  

Find a supplier for baby products

If you chose a niche for selling baby products, then the next is to be choosing a supplier for those products. As a small business owner, it is not expected for you to sign an agreement with a manufacturer for a product you are interested in.

Instead of mass manufacturing deal including thousands of products with a manufacturer or distributor, it is more likely for you to start with small steps as we already discussed. Therefore, you will find a wholesale supplier from abroad or your country.

So, how will you find suppliers which sell wholesale baby products?

During your research, you have probably seen wholesale B2B marketplaces like Alibaba from China, TurkishExporter from Turkiye (a.k.a. Turkey) websites showing wholesalers from the USA like Cleverwholesale.

Here is a list of popular wholesale suppliers around the world:

• Alibaba

• Costco

• Made-in-china

• Indiamart

• Tradeindia

• Turkish Exporter

As a business owner just started to work, you couldn't afford to pay for whosale at the beginning. In this case, you can apply to one of the small business financing options.

Tips for finding wholesale suppliers for baby products

Working with wholesale suppliers for any B2B trade might become a challenge if you just started forming your own business.

Most wholesale suppliers require an MOQ (minimum order quantity) like 100 products at least and give competitive prices for wholesale but you can still try to get competitive prices for even lower volumes.

Here is the tips and tricks to find the best suppliers offering wholesale:

Compare suppliers from wholesale directories or wholesale marketplaces

You can repeat your research for the same or similar baby products on different wholesale directories or marketplaces to compare wholesale prices, B2B trade rules, supplier profiles, payment methods and transactions, and all terms for sale.

When you do research online, you will see local wholesale suppliers or resellers near you first in search engine result pages. If you decide to work with a local supplier, you can meet supplier company's employees in person and see the products at their wholesale warehouse.

Ask your questions to manufacturers directly

In case you contact manufacturers instead of suppliers, they can give a quote even for customized items fits to print-on-demand business model for thousands of lines of products and their variants.

Depending on the niche you chosen for baby products, manufacturers you are in contact could also share information of other manufacturers which you can buy relevant products in your niche later.

Read product labels carefully

Product labels are visual appearings that shows relevant information about that product for a potential buyer or a consumer.

The country of manufacturing, manufacturer, used materials, ingredients, and all other details are listed on the product labels.

If you have chosen organic baby products niche, you can contact the company which those products are manufactured by and ask for potential business deal.

Ask business owners working with wholesale suppliers

Networking shows a great potential for finding wholesalers.

Contacting other small business owners in a network would be a good idea to evaluate which suppliers are reliable and professional to work with.

You can network in numerous ways using social media platforms and networking events.

Check reviews and recommendations

A supplier could be available on different wholesale marketplaces or directories. You can check the reviews and recommendations for the same and different suppliers from social media comments and business review websites.

Since you are non-registered tax-payer as self-employment company owner yet at this step, you can behave like a company owner but make deals as an individual. You can clearly outline your vision and goals in short term and long term to guide your business conversations.

Form your company

Forming a company to become a tax registered business owner unlocks the possibilities to start ecommerce legally from payment provider connections to manufacturer or supplier aggreements.

In order to form a company, you should work with an accountant so that you can track overall income, expenses, taxes and cash flow to or from your company.

Choose a business structure

Business structure has impact on your legal and tax responsibilities that you are subjected to. Even though there are four types of business structures, only two of them business structures suitable for small businesses.

Find a company name

A company name is the official name of your business name that your business operates under it. The name of your company is a part of your brand identity since it conveys an essence of your brand for your target audience.

Try to generate easy to read, memorable business name that represents your brand well.

Your company name shouldn't be in use already by another business even if the business is registered in a country different than the country of your residence.

You should conduct trademark research to make sure that the business name you find doesn't infringe on any existing trademarks.

Furthermore, check domain names from domain providers like Godaddy or Namecheap and ensure that there is no registered domain with your business name.

Here is a list of ideas that you can consider while generating business names:

• Baby Care Well

• Well Baby

• Baby Mall All

• Care Your Baby

• Baby Heaven

Register your business

In order to run a legal business in the USA, you have file the necessary paperwork with your state's business registration office. You can consult to an expert at business registration before forming your company.

Also, you will need employer identification number(EIN) which you will use for paying taxes and opening a business bank account.

Depending on the country of your residency, you might be subjected to different business registration regulations, rules and laws.

Hiring an accountant or bookkepeer can help you to manage your financial records and ensure compliance with tax laws.

Obtain necessary licenses and permits

For health and safety purposes, you might need additional business permits and licenses that meet the standards and regulations for baby products.

You can check out US Consumer Product Safety Commission's site to check whether your baby products meet the requirements or not.

If you are in the European Region (EU) or outside of this region, requirements for the baby products might differ, so ensure your business meet these requirements.

Choose an ecommerce platform

You can sell baby care products online through an ecommerce website using ecommerce platforms such as Wix, Shopify, Ecwid, etc.

Selecting an ecommerce website maker that suits best to your business's needs is crucial since it affects everything from the user experience to your ability to manage listings, promote your products and manage inventory.

• Ease of use: As a person coming from non-technical background, the platform you choose should be easy to set up and manage.

• Customization: Your website design should match with your brand's unique tone. AI website builders can automatically sync brand guidelines to your design.

• SEO: Your product and category pages should be SEO-friendly and rank well on search results.

• Cost: The amount you will pay for the platform subscription and transactions should fit to your budget for the first year of company formation. An ecommerce website costs more than what you expected.

• Responsive design: While 70% of website visitors are coming from mobile devices, you cannot miss the opportunity of reaching to those.

Your online store could connect to other apps and services with ecommerce integrations so that the wholesale and dropshipping suppliers' product catalogs sync to your store automatically.

Search for online store builders

An ecommerce website builder should leverage features and tools that suitable to your product groups and business model.

Not all website makers come up with suitable features and tools for ecommerce business even though they claim they are compatible for several business models.

Design your website

Designing an ecommerce website that attracts customers and driving sales is one of the best effective strategies for online sales.

You can start with ecommerce website templates designed by indsutry-leading professionals and apply your brand guidelines to your site theme.

Plan your website, categorize the products and pages to make easier for visitors to find what they are looking for.

Apply branding to the site theme

Brand development is a term used for representing brand identity within a consistent way by following similar patterns throughout every printed and digital presence of your brand.

Developing a brand is not that easy for someone who is just starting a business online but you can obey the basic principles of developing a brand to get started.

Select fonts and upload your baby products brand's logo to your site and make sure to use a color palette that represents your brand's colors.

You can check out Dribbble, Behance, Freepik to get inspiration about baby products brands and create your own company's brand identity.

Setup your store and settings

Upload products to the store

Add product information such as product title, description, categories, tags, etc. Adding a high quality image of your products from different angles in WEBP format is also important.

Set up shipping locations and pricing

You can select a local shipping location (e.g., a circle that encloses 35km of your current business location) or select multiple locations available to ship.

You can offer free shipping over a certain amount, fix shipping rate for an area, and create custom shipping rules.

Setup tax rates

You should offer variable taxing across the country (for ther USA) where you'll be shipping baby products to. You can automate tax calculations for different product groups and locations using tax automations tools.

Setup payment provider

In order to get paid online, you have to connect a payment provider to your ecomerce website. Available payment providers might vary based on the ecommerce platform you selected and the country of your residency.

Create a sitemap

An online store generally contains a homepage, product pages, product category pages, about us, contact us, FAQ and policies pages.

For a baby products store, you can create a sitemap like below and start designing your online store:

• Homepage: You will show campaign banners, sales and the most important information about your products and store. - Featured products - Latest offers - Bestsellers - New arrivals

• Store pages: - Clothing: Newborn, Infant, Toddler - Toys: Baby toys for 1 year old, educational toys, plush toys - Nursery: Furniture, bedding, decor - Baby care: Health and safety, bath and skincare, feeding

• FAQ: Here you will list the replies to the common questions such as shipping and fulfillment.

• About page: - Our story - Our brand value

• Blog: It is good to share your knowledge about baby care, product standards,etc. - Parenting tips - Product reviews - News and updates

• Policy pages: Here you will list the legal terms associated to your business. - Privacy policy, - Terms and conditions - Data request - Return and refund policy

Here is a simple header navigation menu from mamas & papas.

Make sure you keep the design clean and uncluttered for a smooth user experience across and through the pages.

Also, implement a site navigation menu on the header of the site to let the visitors to find what they are looking for.

Design pages with user experience (UX) in mind

Ecommerce websites have to be responsive and user-friendly. That's why you searched for responsive ecommerce platforms and find the best ecommerce software suits to your needs.

A user-friendly website design simplifies the buying process with call-to-action (CTA) buttons such as "shop now", "add to cart", etc.

Last but not least, all ecommerce site come up with couple of essential features such as search bar, shopping cart, and customer reviews widget. You can add these from the menu that default site elements listed or from the platform's app market.

Optimize product listings for SEO

Wouldn't be awesome for anyone to find your products easily while they are doing research on the Internet? So, developing an SEO strategy is crucial for organic business growth, then.

Optimizing your website pages and product listings for SEO would have a comprehensive impact on your site's traffic for free.

You can optimize product pages meta titles and meta descriptions to rank your products and product category pages well on search engines like Google.

Do keyword research

Conducting a keyword research contributes to take advantage from relevant keywords (baby products on sale, baby toys for 1 year old, etc.) in website content.

You should also take user search intent into account to estimate what people are using as search terms.

Optimize meta descriptions

In order to increase click-through rate from search engines, you should optimize meta titles and meta descriptions for each of the products listed on your store.

Here is a product listing sample from Amazon. See how Amazon uses keywords in its product meta title and meta description.

How to Market Baby Products?

You formed a company, and created an ecommerce site, so what comes next? Reaching your target audience and driving sales through your online store are not a simple. So the next step is marketing your business and making sales.

Create a YouTube channel

YouTube has always been a source of educational content and an essential tools for marketers. The platform's extensive features such as multilingual transcript and video description make YouTube a unique marketing platform reaching billions of people everyday.

You can showcase your baby products by highlighting their features, benefits, usage and compare them with other brands on a YouTube review video.

Here is a baby products review channel on YouTube.

You can also record parenting tips like baby care routines and safety tips during travels, and how-to guides such as setting a crib or using a baby carrier.

Sharing YouTube videos on other social media platforms or embeding relevant videos to your website can turn your online store into an educational and instructional hub for parents and children.

For more tips and tricks about being a Youtuber, you can read our YouTube content marketing strategy guide.

Start a blog

One of the best converting marketing strategies rely on organic traffic resources like blog posts.

Blogging regularly and sending newsletters to your subscribers keep the traffic to your site stable while increasing your business fame on the Internet.

With a blog marketing strategy, you can attract visitors to your site without having to pay any money to paid ads.

You can categorize your blog articles like the following:

• Parenting tips

• Child-care products

• 1-12 months baby care guides

Baby Products Store FAQ

Are baby products taxed?

Even though baby products are exemp from salex tax in Ohio, the tax regulations may differ in other regions of the USA.

You have to check online store tax rates for each state and country.

Are baby products good for dropshipping?

Dropshipping success is about the products you choose to sell within a niche. Baby products are a highly competitive niche, but you have still chance to market and sell new, improved and practical products.

Are baby products a good niche for ecommerce?

Baby products are a stable niche in ecommerce. Due to the constant demand, estimated 385000 are born every day worldwide, selling baby products could be a long-term business idea for the next years.

What baby products are safe to sell?

For any business model, you can sell any baby products except the ones listed below:

• Baby food

• Baby furniture

• Small baby toys (risk of choking)

Are baby products profitable?

Baby products are always in demand since parents want to offer the best amenities to their babies. They purchase clothes, feeding kits, and other things on daily basis. Even with dropshipping, there is a big profit margin to consider.