Stay-at-home moms create a business plan that's in the bag
By: Andrea Koskey
Examiner Staff Writer
June 18, 2009
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| Hot item: The first shipment, 60,000, of Caryl Parker, left, and Jan Mercer’s stylish tote bags for women sold out in six months. (Juan Carlos Pometta Betancourt/Special to The Examiner) |
SAN MATEO COUNTY — Peninsula residents Jan Mercer and Caryl Parker went with a simple business model: see a need and fill it.
One year later, their small company, which designs and sells environmentally sustainable shopping bags, is thriving.
Mixed Bag Designs — founded by the two stay-at-home moms in February 2008 — began simply as an idea. Mercer was looking to create a large bag that could carry multiple shopping bags from car to home in fewer trips.
“As a mom you have a lot of things to carry,” she said. “It just made sense.”
Parker, however, was not sold on the idea.
“I didn’t think anyone would buy them,” she said.
Mercer had another plan: create reusable shopping totes that would offer women a more stylish alternative to logo-adorned bags sold by stores like Trader Joe’s or Whole Foods.
Now, Mercer and Parker have a warehouse off Rollins Road in Burlingame stocked with the polypropylene bags that come in a wide variety of colors and patterns. Sold online, to stores and at fundraisers, retail prices range from $7 for the “drugstore” bag to $12 for the “department store” tote.
Their first shipment of 60,000 bags sold in six months, Mercer said. They are looking to branch out and make men’s products and corporate designs.
Although Mixed Bag Designs has been their most successful idea, it’s not Mercer and Parker’s first. The pair, who met 15 years ago, considered other products — a coffee sling that would allow someone to fumble for their keys in a parking lot while carrying a freshly purchased latte or vocabulary cards to help teens study for the SATs.
The bag idea, combined with Mercer’s prior sales and contract experience in the retail industry and Parker’s passion for design and previous employment with IBM, proved to be the most plausible plan.
“I think it would’ve been different if we started with a plan and tried to sell it,” Parker said. “But we just went for it. We ordered the bags and built from there.”
