Coming off a big win at TechWeek last week, Chicago-based BabbaCo, has been on a roll as today they announced they’ve raised $1.2 million in funding lead by Lightbank and SV Angel (Ron Conway’s angel group). BabbaCo was founded in 2007 offering baby products like inflatable play mats and other products created by founder Jessica Kim. As one of this years Excelerate Labs startups, BabbaCo has created a new line of business by creating an interesting monthly subscription option.
The new business is focused on helping to educate kids but also assist parents with providing fun and educational activities without having to run to Michael’s each week to gather the right supplies for the various arts and craft projects. So each month BabbaCo will send a BabbaBox with all the materials and videos needed for parents to create educational activities with their kids. For example, a box may include a video about trees that teaches a lesson about nature and offers additional activities for the parents to do with their kids with that theme in mind. The box would include all the materials needed to perform those suggested activities explained in the box (pipecleaners, googly eyes, glue, etc). The boxes are available for specific ages 3 through 5 years old and cost $29.99 per month. It’s like Netflix or Wine of the Month but for kids activities and could really save parents a lot of time in coming up with creative, safe and fun activities to keep a smile on kids faces. The monthly boxes also include an element of surprise as each month will offer a new activity for these preschoolers to tackle. The monthly subscription box concept seems to be picking up some steam as we’ve recently seen a number of them pop up taking various niche markets, like LostCrates for stationary, Jewelmint for jewerly and ShoeDazzle for shoes.
According to BabbaCo CEO Kim, people spend around 40 billion dollars a year on kids under five and moms spend about 2.1 trillion dollars a year in general… so BabbaCo is looking to tap into those funds with their latest opportunity, the BabbaBox. Check out the video below where Jessica Kim explains the BabbaBox.