We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Jenny Drew Oubari a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
Hi Jenny Drew, thanks for joining us today. How did you come up with the idea for your business?
It all started in paris in 2014….well, not the business, but the idea came out of an experience I had in Paris as an Au Pair. I studied my freshman year of University in Paris, France at the American University of Paris through a transfer program with USC in Los Angeles. In order to make some extra cash in between classes, I would nanny three French kids. That is what sparked the initial idea for all the babies!
I was so fascinated by the simplicity of their clothing, the quality of the fabrics…it truly felt like quality and simplicity that was lacking in the US at the time. After arriving back in LA, I couldn’t stop thinking of the idea of baby clothes, but I knew it had to be bigger than baby clothes. Then one day, me and my mom were just sitting outside concepting this “idea” I had…and suddenly she ran into the house, and came back out with printer ink.
Yes, I know, printer ink feels very irrelevant to this story, but it’s the biggest part of it all. Me and my mom both knew that babies outgrow their clothes quickly in their first few years of life, but we didn’t specifically know what ‘problem’ we were solving, or how to get there. The printer ink brought us there! My mom mentioned that every time she ran out of ink, a new cartridge was sent her way, and she would send back the old one to be recycled properly. Boom – that is when the a-ha moment hit.
wear. grow. give.
Wear – enjoy these cozy organic baby pieces. Grow – once your lil’ one outgrows the pieces, it’s time for something new that fits. Give – send us back your old cozies and we will hand deliver them to babies in need.
The mission behind what built all the babies for our launch in 2019, and the business that is guiding us as we transition into a subscription based platform to really shed light to the importance and ease-ability of this model.
It took a while to get it off the ground, of course. I remember just spending every day in college telling everyone about the idea I had all while interning at various companies, managing my course load, and trying to enjoy the college experience. Something about starting a clothing brand felt so intimidating to me. I didn’t know anything, I didn’t even know where to start.
Finally, it was time to stop talking and start doing. It took until declining a full time job offer upon graduating college (YES! the thing we ALL dream of getting), to finally push me into saying YES to going for it. Now, this is definitely not something I would recommend, but it was the thing that I had to do for me, and for this business. Shortly after saying no to a full time job offer, I tried to be an Executive Assistant to none other than coined #girlboss Sophia Amoruso. After a month of tireless interviews, fancy decks, I ended up making it to the final round, but not getting the job. I thought that by pursuing that job, it would teach me the tools of starting something. Once I got a NO for that, it was the confirmation to just GO, and figure it out on my own. Fail fast, learn quickly, trust my gut.
I started working part-time at Glossier as an ‘offline editor,’ which is basically just a fancy way of saying I was a retail associate. I woke up at 5AM to babysit to make extra money, then went to my Glossier shift, then went to another babysitting shift, and then would try and squeeze whatever time I could into starting all the babies. It was a year of true blood, sweat, tears, and sacrifice to get this business off the ground. But it honestly made the moment where I actually launched all the babies in September 2019 an even bigger gift that I was so proud of.
Nothing felt better than putting in my two weeks at my part-time job, leaving all of my nannying opportunities, and diving in head first to pursue my business full time. It was a dream come true…but still to this day, accomplishing that dream isn’t easy.
Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.
I started as a competitive soccer player my whole life, which I genuinely attribute to my focus, will power, determination, positivity, and drive. It required endless discipline, training, and belief in getting back up over and over, even when it was hard. After an injury took me out and my soccer dreams ended, I knew it was time to pursue my entrepreneurial passions.
I always wanted to start something. I remember running to my mom from age 6-10 always with a different idea, and a big drive to make them happen. What was so affirming, is the ideas I had actually are businesses today. I wanted to start a beauty bus that did birthday parties for girls and made them feel beautiful. Think Dry Bar, but on the move. I am pretty sure it exists, and I am pretty sure it may actually be called the beauty bus haha. I also wanted to start a creative writing workshop ––think We Work meets Soho House. A space for people to come and write, work, and feel creative. I wanted to call it Wonderworld Writing.
I have always had a knack for working. Since I can remember I wanted to work. Whether it was on set as a production assistant with my parents, or helping my grandfather organize his office, or babysitting, or all the various internships I had in college, and different job opportunities or volunteer work that came my way. I was always saying YES to learning and giving it my ALL.
As far as all the babies goes, the path to be in the clothing industry definitely wasn’t an expected path. I always knew I wanted to combine fashion and philanthropy. I always knew I loved clothes, and styling. I always knew I wanted to be a mom, and was a great babysitter. But I certainly never knew I wanted to start a baby clothing brand, and then that baby brand would ultimately turn into a baby and adult matching clothing brand. Is it funny how life works though? All of these little connections and passions, and things you are just intuitively good at, ultimately becoming the thing you do for work.
I taught myself everything through trial and error. After my mom bought me my first sewing machine, I quickly realized MAKING the pieces myself was not for me. So, it was about researching, finding what worked, creating meaningful relationships in the industry. I started with my fabric manufacturer because I loved that he provided 100% GOTS certified organic cotton and that was a non-negotiable for me. He has a family run business in LA, and that was also a big must for me. Made in the USA. Then from there, I was led to my production facility, then my pattern maker, then my size grader, then my dye house. It was so beautiful how one right answer kept leading me to the next right answer, until finally, I had a real life growing business. A business that I started without ANY understanding or expertise, and a business now, where I feel like an expert four years in. Sure, there have been plenty of losses, plenty of failures, plenty of missteps along the way. But they all continue to help me grow as a founder.
I am most proud of the love, authenticity, and transparency I pour into my brand. I make sure the customers feel like family, like friends. I know their names. I write them handwritten notes to thank them for their orders. As a fully online brand, I like to bring the human connection. I avoid waste and find creative packaging solutions through that. In not “caring” about making money per se, but caring about how my customer feels about the quality of clothing they are paying for, or where it’s coming from, the transaction becomes way more fulfilling than it would be if it were just about a big profit margin, or scaling up FAST. That is not who we are at all the babies, and that is not what I want. Of course I want to grow, but as we grow, I never want to lose our brand value, or lose the thing that keeps our customers coming back month over month, over and over again. I never want to lose that human connection. That cozy feeling we create.
Learning and unlearning are both critical parts of growth – can you share a story of a time when you had to unlearn a lesson?
I think all of my toughest lessons for the business have been rooted in financials. It’s just not my strong suit. Instead of thinking “it’s okay, I can hire someone for that,” it’s super important to know the in’s and out’s and to stop making excuses if you don’t get it. Because that’s what I did, and that is what I find myself having to unlearn constantly. You certainly don’t have to be an expert, but you DEFINITELY need to understand the baseline of what things cost, your margins, what is happening in the business, and how your money is being spent.
It only took until this year, where I REALLY took the financials into my own hands because we are looking to fundraise for our new era, where we are going to launch our subscription service. But in going through all of my accounts, seeing how much we put into the company, seeing the sales, seeing all of it firsthand and getting really detailed and tactile about the numbers, has helped me in immense ways.
I always seem to let my creativity take control, but you can’t let the creative thrive if the financials aren’t there to help you survive. It’s a give and take. It’s a push and pull. But it all works in congruence together. I will never be good at making an excel sheet, and if you looked at my excel sheets you would probably laugh, but they work for my brain, and they at least give me an understanding of the in’s and out’s of my business and what it takes for us to be financially successful.
How did you build your audience on social media?
It feels as though the world of social media changes rapidly, by the minute! But the way that we grew was super organically and it was really cool to experience. We simply didn’t have the funds to market, so we did it our way. Our target market is the millennial mom market, and millennials in general. A huge ‘reason to buy’ for millennials, especially millennial moms is through word of mouth. Aka “if my mom friends love it, I will love it too.” We started by just gifting a few micro influencers on social media through cold DM’ing. And then from there, it just blew up to the point that we had huge influencers buying our pieces and posting about them, without us gifting or paying for any marketing! It was really incredible, and just made me feel so grateful as a founder. Mind you, this was during covid, so everyone was buying sweats and we had just recently launched matching baby and adult organic sweats, so truly, we got lucky. We were getting tagged in so many posts, it felt like 95% of our instagram posts was user generated content, which also made consumers feel like our brand was way more attainable, authentic, and it was cool for people to see it ‘in real life,’ instead of just posted on a white backdrop.
The best advice is to just find your ‘brand aesthetic’ and stick to it. All the posts we were being tagged in, all connected to the brand vibe we had already created. It was all hand in hand. The value was there, and the audience was a part of that and getting it too. And always always always, trust your gut when it comes to ideas around marketing campaigns, photoshoots, etc. And most importantly, find your voice and be as transparent as you can as a brand.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.allthebabies.co
- Instagram: @allthebabies.co @theporchtimepod @drewoubari
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jennydrew/
Image Credits
Christ Daniel Marisa Vitale