How to Take Organic Apparel Mainstream: Start with The Little Seed at Target
When Soleil Moon Frye (you remember -- the pint-sized pigtailed star of 80s sitcom Punky Brewster) and her business partner Paige Goldberg Tolmach started their small, eco-friendly boutique specializing in organic, non-toxic goods for babies in Los Angeles, they had an eye towards mass-market distribution. Now with their special limited collection for Target (TGT) Frye and Goldberg Tolmach's The Little Seed seems to have hit the green sweet spot full on.
It's not hard to see why. The two realized early on that not every concerned parent could make the trip to their hip Larchmont Village shop, nor could they afford to spend $18 on a single onesie (especially if they have a baby who's a prolific pooper). So partnering with big retailers to make the green goods more widely available for less was the way forward. First, The Little Seed took up shop on Amazon (AMZN) offering an array of products from beds and burpcloths to bath soaps, in all their non-toxic, non-BPA glory.
But $85 cardboard teepees (for backyard frolic) and $400 crib mattresses are hardly the kind of impulse buy to be made online. And if sales rankings count for anything, said organic crib mattress is barely in the top 20 in its rather narrow category.
So the proprietresses of The Little Seed took an editor's eye to their offerings and presented a whittled down collection to Target. This worked on several fronts: one because it is easy to mass produce garments and blankets with simple construction and in solid colors; two because the discount chain has been on a dedicated mission (after shareholders put the full-court press on) to reduce packaging and add to its eco-friendly offerings over the past three years.
The resulting Little Seed assortment of 21 items (onesies, blankets, bibs, hats and booties) is reasonably priced between $7.99 and $12.99 and is constructed from organic cotton. The fact that Target's been manufacturing organic goods for a while also bodes well for the integrity of the material. H&M got itself in hot water with tree-hugging consumer watchdogs recently for use of genetically modified cotton in what it touted as an all organic Spring women's collection.
If Target wants to truly leave its competition in the dust (looking at you and your cadmium-laden kid's jewelry, Walmart) -- and if The Little Seed wants to live up to its mission of saving the world â€" the two need to make the line available all the time. Capsule collections work wonders in the over-hyped world of fashion, but baby goods are perennial sellers. The fact that they're also organic can only help green the bottom line.
Image via thelittleseed.com
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