We were lucky to catch up with Ashley Lucy recently and have shared our conversation below.
Ashley , thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. What was it like going from idea to execution? Can you share some of the backstory and some of the major steps or milestones?
The sight of white sands and crystal clear waters in paradise on earth, the sound of my daughter giggling and the gentle lapping of waves on the beach. The peace that can only come from having everything you need for your child, the absence of vacation-induced anxiety. These were the feelings that came to me when I first used BabyQuip on a vacation with my parents in Hawaii. A stroller, a crib, toys, all the things that would have been nightmarish for me to bring across the ocean were instead ready at the airport, hand delivered and freshly cleaned. Once I experienced it for myself, I knew that there were so many visiting moms in Vegas that would love to have this same feeling.
After that first amazing experience I reached out to Melissa, fellow mom and enterprising entrepreneur, to seek out a business partner to start our own BabyQuip company. While I was still on the waitlist, her eager readiness was contagious and we began to plan our burgeoning business. We inventoried all of the items that no longer fit our rapidly growing daughters–infant toys, strollers–and planned which items we were willing to invest in–mini-cribs, wagons. We didn’t stop there, signing ourselves up as the only BabyQuip cleaning service in the entire valley as well. Within short order we got approved and got our first order! A lovely family in a time-share just off the Strip rented a wagon and a full-size portable crib, we got the genders wrong and bought sheets for the baby boy when the toddler girl was actually the one sleeping in it. We got lucky though, as blue whales are pretty gender neutral.
Hoping to increase our legitimacy should we have to deliver in hotels, we went through a series of appointments downtown trying to get the right business license. County, city, state offices and hours of waiting while juggling our two toddlers left us exhausted but accomplished once the license finally came through the mail. We began a challenge to increase our visibility through a daily social media challenge, posting every single day on our instagram and facebook accounts, posting in mom groups, and getting a legion of business cards printed, just in time for the summer rush of orders.
Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.
Hi! We’re Ashley and Melissa, and we’re BabyQuip Quality Providers. We offer rental and cleaning services for visitors and locals in the greater Las Vegas area. As of right now we are the only cleaners on BabyQuip for the entire valley, and we offer pickup and drop off options.
BabyQuip as a brand is “AirBnB” for everything you might need for children on vacation. We got into it after we couldn’t quite bring ourselves to sell the mountain of things that you get for your babies that quickly become to small for them, and realized that we could be helping other parents during stressful times that should be relaxing. Last year Vegas was back up to 40 million visitors, just shy of the 2016 all time high of 42.9 million. Vegas is strong, and these visitors aren’t just octogenarian career gamblers, over half of the visitors in 2023 were between 30-49, which follows a trend of decreasing median visitor. We think these numbers point to a growth in the people with families coming to town, and we hope services like ours will persuade people to bring their little ones.
This is our full-time career, and so we offer flexibility and punctuality that can be hard to find from these online marketplaces. Since we’re the only cleaners in the Valley for BabyQuip, we’re literally set apart as a service that can help locals as well as visitors.
Can you open up about how you funded your business?
One of the great aspects of BabyQuip as a model is the ease of just getting started, as mom’s with kids that seem to just be growing up way too fast, we had a lot of the items we needed already through shower gifts or just the year and a half of accumulation since our daughters were born. We already had several strollers, wagons, car seats, and other things that we could rent out.
The first thing that we purchased new for our business was a portable full size crib. We found one on sale on Amazon and decided to split it 50/50, a little nervous to spend any money on this brand new idea. It turned out to be a great investment, that crib is our most rented item!
How’d you meet your business partner?
We both gave birth to our babies at the same hospital within 3 weeks of each other, with the same OBGYN office. They were running a new program to encourage moms to try breastfeeding, and the consultant was particularly persuasive and persistent. She’s actually been a huge help in the marketing for our work, giving us the motivation for the social media challenges, and giving great advice on SEO, which is so critical for small business.
We first met at that support group when our babies were only a couple weeks old. We hit it off right away and then we learned that we lived within walking distance of each other and we started having play dates constantly. Now our babies are toddlers and the best of friends. It makes for a great partnership for our business because our kids entertain each other while we try to get work done!
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.babyquip.com/ashley717
- Instagram: @babyquip_ashleyandmelissa
Image Credits
N/A we took all of the pictures on our own