November 8 – ORONOCO, Minn. – Oronoco’s Busy Baby will soon hit the shelves of two Big Box retailers.
Founded in 2017 in Beth Benike’s basement in Oronoco, Busy Baby began selling silicone placemats with elastic cords to attach baby toys to at Walmart on Nov. 4, 2024.
“Sometimes MASSIVE companies do things to support small brands like Busy Baby LLC,” Benike recently wrote on LinkedIn. “We are so grateful for the support we have received as we get ready to launch in Walmart stores next week! Big thanks to Nilka Garcia for being our guiding light! Eric Fynbo and I are so #grateful!”
The products are now available in 250 Walmarts nationwide, including three stores in the Twin Cities area. The Busy Baby items can also be found online at Target and will hit the shelves there in March.
“We are very proud,” Benike said. “It’s grown from my basement to a warehouse in Zumbrota, and now from just our little website to Walmart. … It’s been a pretty amazing journey and for those close to us or the people who have made the journey followed, it’s a really cool milestone.”
Benike and her team also had to come up with new packaging and products for Walmart and Target. The products on Walmart’s shelves will be slightly different than those on Busy Baby’s website. Benike said her team has developed feeding kits for families, including a mini mat with a fork, spoon and bib. The fork and spoon are attached to the bib.
“It’s scary sometimes always wondering, are we going to do well or are people going to buy it at Walmart?” Benike said, adding that the company will have a line review with Walmart in about four weeks to see what can happen next year.
The retailer could decide to expand the product to 4,000 stores, which would mean a huge investment for Busy Baby to buy inventory, or “if for some reason it doesn’t sell, they can just send it back to us, and We would do it then.” lost all that money.”
Walmart also has an ad featuring Benike and her brother and business partner, Eric Fynbo, that focuses on the veteran company. He also served in the army.
Benike was tired of constantly having to pick up toys thrown by her baby during mealtimes. She decided to take matters into her own hands and began experimenting by cutting and gluing together prototypes in her basement and then testing them with her son. But everything developed quickly.
“I made one for myself and one for my best friend who had a baby eight days after me,” Beth wrote in a post. “About a month later my friend messaged me saying she forgot their ‘mat thing’ the night before and it was a miserable experience. She said she never knew how useful it was until she ran out of it and suggested that I ‘make it real.'”
