The contracts with Minneapolis-based Target and Arkansas-based Walmart are both good for a year.
“Winning business with Walmart or Target is always cause for celebration for a small business,” said Carol Spieckerman, an Arkansas-based retail consultant. “It’s an exciting kickstart for Busy Baby,” she said, but one that comes with risks that will have to be carefully managed if the new relationships are to last long term.
Big box retailers can have unprecedented inventory demands. Busy Baby will need to backfill fast-selling stock while mitigating losses when certain product lag on the shelf, she said.
Fynbo Benike said the retailers have done a good job onboarding the company. But being a megastore supplier is very different than dealing with independent stores.
Walmart “has very strict requirements” for packaging, box labels and bar codes and they change depending on whether the items are sold via Walmart Marketplace, Walmart.com or in a Walmart store.
“We haven’t done this before so there is a learning curve,” said Fynbo Benike while replacing one errant label with the right one.
