Do children need perfume or $30 haircuts? No, but smart entrepreneurs targeting affluent parents know how to make you think they doDoes 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. They're also sleek enough to fit aesthetically in a design-conscious family's home. High chairs normally retail for $80 to $120, but May, a father of two, justifies his prices. "There's nothing more emotional or more important or closer to you than what product is going to be used on your baby," he says.
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