Parents’ Pride Creates a Boom for Birth Announcement Sales
Your baby has arrived, but you still haven’t scoured the stationery stores for birth announcements. Forget the fill-in-the-blank cards for your future President of the United States. You need something unique. Something with style. Something that costs money.
Birth announcements with attitude are flooding the marketplace. Savvy marketers have cashed in on a trend that eschews cigars and boxed cards in favor of hand-painted announcements, satin-edged envelopes, clever candy bars, six-foot lawn storks and a choice of faxed or embossed footprints.
“The parenting market continues to expand, especially in Southern California,” said Scott Frager, account executive with Burbank-based L. A. Parent magazine. “The market is nearly recession-proof. Parents may choose to stay at home for dinner to save money, but they’re still spending money on their children, and that begins with baby announcements.”
Frager said he has noticed a leap in the number of announcement ads since 1989. Until about six years ago, stationery stores stocked meager supplies of boxed or special-order announcements, most filed in the same section with sympathy cards. Today, some stores carry as many as 30 books packed with an astounding variety of announcement cards.
Love ‘n Kisses stationers in Sherman Oaks offers about 1,000 birth-announcement designs, along with other card lines.
“There wasn’t anything to choose from when I started this business 10 years ago,” owner Marilyn Kove said. “Now women are so jaded. They look through our entire selection and say, ‘I just don’t know if I can find anything I like.’ ”
On a recent afternoon, Sherman Oaks resident Lisa Rowen leafed through stacks of announcement albums, weary after finding only “very old-fashioned, rather blah” selections at other stores.
“Some of these are pretty wild and contemporary,” said Rowen, 32, finally choosing a card printed with a toy chest packed with baseball mitts and bats, priced at $125 for 50, including rush delivery charges.
Mothers, Kove said, are increasingly choosing classic designs, such as Crane’s double card with hand-tied colored ribbon and bow, priced at $189 for 100 cards. Crane’s, in business since 1801, introduced its first birth announcement catalogue last year, boosting its selections from three to 30.
Kove also offers custom announcements that require a minimum order of 100. Customers have ordered a baseball bat and ball delivered to homes in a mesh bag ($10) and toy baby carriages replete with dolls announcing the birth on their T-shirts ($15). She also offers cards embossed with a baby’s footprints, priced at $189 for 100.
Kove estimated that the store sells hundreds of its regularly stocked cards to customers each month, and receives one or two custom orders.
Barbara Kassel, co-owner of Parchment stationers in Westlake Village, began noticing a surge in popularity of high-end announcements about three years ago. Her store offers custom hand-painted cards, priced at $7 each, that incorporate parents’ interests such as golf, a family dog or a local lake. Most specialty stores offer hand or machine calligraphy.
Other designs feature cards fashioned from paper and lace, threaded to form a baby’s quilt ($18 each). An eight-inch-square silk card mounted with silk paper ($15 each) features a corner satin ribbon and bow and slips into a satin-lined envelope.
Recipients of such announcements would probably have a hard time discarding the creation.
“That’s the point,” Kove said. “It’s designed to be treasured. People are looking for lasting mementos. They’re also becoming more conservative, looking for something classic and elegant, not so flashy and glitzy.”
Along with its elegant line, Kassel’s store also creates plastic baby bottles stuffed with announcements and shredded ribbon, priced at $11 each. “We just invert the nipple, put a stamp on the bottle and drop it in a mailbox,” Kassel said. “People want distinction, something that will make other people say, ‘Wow! I’ve never seen that one before.’ ”
Some announcement concepts have spread in grass-roots fashion, largely escaping the eyes of marketers. Faxing a baby’s footprints has grown in popularity in the past year as more parents gain access to facsimile machines.
“I’ve faxed about 10 footprints in the past month,” said Lana Golubchik, a clerk at Kinko’s Copies in Van Nuys. “It’s simple and fast. The prints look like people have just stuck their kids’ feet in ink and pressed them on a sheet of paper. They usually write in the time of birth, weight, date and so on.”
Kinko’s Studio City location offered customers one free footprint fax last year. “Most people sent it to grandma, that kind of thing,” store manager Vince Schmeltzer said. “We didn’t do that many.”
When asked if many grandmothers have home fax machines, Schmeltzer replied: “You’d be surprised.”
Many hospitals, including Humana Hospital West Hills, carry Hershey bars with outer wrappers reading, “Announcing it’s a --.” Windows on the outer wrapper expose the word he or she spelled out on the Hershey label underneath. Most hospital gift shops began carrying the bars, designed by Hershey and priced at 50 cents each, within the last five years.
Donna and David Lamm hit a marketing gold mine with an announcement styled after a driver’s license. In the upper left-hand corner of the wallet-sized card are the letters DNB or Department of New Babies. The baby’s photo, name and address are featured along with the sex, hair color, height and weight. The new arrival’s previous address (womb) is given along with a signature (tiny black footprints).
With new national advertising offering licenses for each state, the Lamms’ 3-year-old Sherman Oaks business, Photoflash, has seen card sales triple in the past year.
Most announcement services advertise in the Wet Set Gazette, a monthly customer newsletter published by Dy-Dee Diaper Service, and Parent Magazine.
“We were having our first child; we tried to think of an idea and discovered most styles out there were a bit bland,” said David Lamm, 35, who receives about 100 calls for the card each day. Cards sell for $50 for the first 25 and $1 for each additional card.
“I got a lot of phone calls from people after I sent the license,” said Woodland Hills resident Sandi Solomowitz, whose first child was born a year ago. “No one called and said, ‘Oh, we got this one before.’ They thought it was cute. They wanted to know when little Nicole was getting her car. She received a lot of toy cars as gifts. I’m afraid she’s going to want a Jaguar before she’s 10.”
Big League Cards, a 10-year-old Valencia franchise, offers baseball card replicas with a customer’s choice of information on the back. Many choose the cards for graduation and bar mitzvahs and, in the past year, birth announcements. A newborn’s statistics are printed on the back, along with a color photograph and name on the front, priced at $36 for 50 cards.
Tired of a “fluff and bunnies” announcement approach, Ken Drake, 42, began his Agoura Hills-based business Fresh Impressions two years ago. Drake specializes in custom-themed cards, such as a musical concept ordered last year by Nan and Booker T. Jones. (Jones is leader of the group, Booker T. & the MGs, a popular R & B band.
“We had six children and then along came our twins,” said Nan Jones, 41, who lives in West Hills. The couple’s folded card features a keyboard on the front and on the inside: “Booker T. and Nan Jones, after six smash hits, announce their new stereo release.”
“We sent about 200 cards,” Nan Jones said. “My husband wanted to let his peers know about the twins in a style that reflects his work.”
Finally, there’s a twist on that cult classic, the plastic flamingo lawn decoration. Some parents erect a six-foot, two-dimensional wooden stork in front yards--announcing their new arrival not only to friends and neighbors, but to mail carriers as well.
“It’s more of a suburban-type concept,” said Gary Hartman, 28, who stocks a dozen storks at his Simi Valley-based Rent-a-Stork. “Neighbors see the stork and come out of the woodwork, bringing over meals. Sometimes parents have never met them before. It’s festive and a kind of conversation piece--like a Christmas tree.”
Most stork delivery companies--including Stork Arrival and Nonnie and Sandra Hiller’s Curb Card Announcements, both run out of Pasadena homes--charge from $35 to $60 for a three- to seven-day stork visit. All three companies offer a keepsake wooden plaque with a baby’s vital statistics that hangs from the stork’s beak.
The general response of parents and friends to the brightly colored cut-out is, “What a cute idea,” said Hartman, who began his business in 1983.
But other parents think that buying into the baby announcement boom is a waste of time and money.
“What’s the point?” asked Alison Mautner, 31, of Canoga Park, who decided not to formally announce the birth of her first child, Justin, last year. “It’s just an extra expense. And it’s not the kind of advertisement I would want to have lurking out on my front lawn.
“When you have a brand-new baby, it’s not exactly like you have tons of time on your hands to pick out and address cards. I’m still working on the thank yous from people who sent us gifts.”
