Laguna Hills Company Hoping for Big Splash With Cologne for Kids
When Dad splatters his face with Paco Rabanne and Mom dabs a wrist with Chanel, junior can apply his own fragrant emblem of juvenile success--a personal cologne.
In a world of designer baby clothes and pricey toys, a Laguna Hills company has embarked on a $15-million venture to market nationally a line of premium toiletries for children.
Kids by William & Clarissa has developed premium-priced products ranging from a boy’s and girl’s cologne to lip balm and liquid soap. The firm says its products are less likely to cause allergic reactions, use pesticide-free plant extracts, contain no animal products and are produced without testing on animals.
Kids’ ivory-colored bottles and tubes, now being sent to chain stores and advertised in parenting magazines, are aimed not so much at children under 12 as their parents, who make buying decisions for them.
Kids President Mary J. George said working parents compensate for spending less time with their children by buying them more expensive things--from toys to clothes. The company’s research showed that while parents were willing to pay more for superior children’s toiletries, no one was mass-marketing them.
“What we found out from these affluent parents was that nobody has done anything in personal care,” she said.
George said the company set out to create an array of toiletries that would be priced higher than those offered by industry giants such as Johnson & Johnson but lower than upscale adult personal-care goods, such as those sold by Neutrogena.
Although the products are about to hit supermarket, drug and discount store shelves for the first time, similar toiletries with a Kids label have appeared on a limited basis in upscale department stores for two years.
The idea came from Bay Area entrepreneur William A. Meyer, a former president of Swenson’s International Ice Cream and president of Kate & Cheryl Inc., a children’s apparel company. He formed a company named after his two children, William and Clarissa.
About the same time, Irvine-based VLI Corp. was sold to American Home Products Corp. As a result of the merger, VLI--best known as the maker of the Today contraceptive sponge--moved its management and manufacturing plant to the East. VLI President George and three of her top executives decided to stay in Orange County and form their own firm.
Meyer and the former VLI executives were linked through a venture capital investment fund, Montgomery Medical Ventures II-LP, in August, 1989. The new team fit together well: Meyer supplied the ideas, George and her colleagues the management and Montgomery Medical the start-up funds.
In the months that followed, the company reformulated products and packaging. It lined up national distributors and raised $5.7 million in an initial public offering. Marketing Director Elizabeth J. Borrowman said about the only resemblance between the new Kids products and the products that Meyer developed is the scent and the name.
As for the scent, the company describes it as smelling like “fresh, clean kids.” Actually, it’s kind of a lemon-lime.
