Scarebaby Seeks to Expand Horizons
Holly Hertzel was angry at the election results in 2004. She channeled that frustration into selling some anti-President Bush coffee mugs she’d designed for friends and family through the Web.
“I couldn’t believe they started selling,” says Hertzel, whose day job is working as a part-time admissions officer at the University of Washington.
That led her and partner Marc Prittie to start Scarebaby Design, an online marketer of products like coffee mugs, t-shirts, stickers, tote bags in 40 different designs, including a line aimed at children.
The company took its name from a marker printed on a children’s sled in the opening scenes of the Christmas movie “It’s a Wonderful Life.”
Scarebaby markets partly through Google AdWords, buying very specific words. For example, the company uses the words “Fleur de Lis Christmas Ornaments” to advertise its line versus just the generic words “Christmas ornaments.” Hertzel explains that this level of detail is necessary because the words “Christmas ornaments” are too expensive and general and would produce too little return for the money.
The Seattle company also markets itself through blogs, word-of-mouth and publicity — Hertzel has appeared on several national television talk shows. Several well-known celebrities have purchased the company’s politically themed products.
So far, Scarebaby.com gets between 1,000 and 3,000 page views per week. As far as she can tell, Scarebaby’s customers tend to be professionals between 25and 50, though Hertzel concedes she doesn’t have a lot of demographic information on the company’s customers.
“They’re not the same people as those on [online social networking community] MySpace,” she says.
Going forward, Hertzel is looking to maybe add as many as 100 different product lines. Long term, she’s also thinking of expanding Scarebaby internationally but admits the cost of shipping makes this problematic.
But first things first.
“My goal right now is to make enough money for me and my partner to do this full time,” she says.
