Babies gone wild
By
A child in a black snapsuit that says, ‘It ain’t gonna change itself’ runs past Todd Turfler at the mall. Turfler gives the child a thumbs-up sign and says, “cool shirt dude.” The mother of the child nods appreciatively and tells Turfler it gets a lot of attention. Turfler says he can only imagine but makes no mention of the fact that he is both the creator and muscle behind the clothing.
Some of the less risqué onesies with sayings like, ‘my grandma rocks’, ‘west cost strollers’ and “beastie babies, licensed to spill’.
Although the St. Paul shop opened four years ago, its foundation began to form decades earlier. As a child, Turfler followed his garage-sale-fanatic parents to suburb after suburb in New York as they bought bikes out of garages and resold them on the neighborhood streets. As he grew older, his business savvy increased. In college Turfler and a friend frequented a local screen-printing shop and ordered dozens of shirts with their favorite witty sayings to sell around campus.
“We kept chomping at the bit and saying we should just open our own screen-printing shop but it never happened there,” Turfler said. He went on to manage a few Manhattan restaurants but soon moved to North Carolina and opened a photography shop on the beach during the summer months and sold toys in a mall during the winter. During his North Carolina stint he met Lisa, from Minnesota, on a seven-day bike tour. They clicked right away, began e-mailing and not too long after Todd found himself moving to Minnesota.
Turfler, who is 38 but says he feels 23 and acts five, was ready to open that screen-printing shop. He opened a kiosk in the Rosedale Center during the holiday season and sold the leftover toys from his time in North Carolina. The profit from the kiosk was used to purchase screen-printing equipment and Rebel Ink was formed. The name is derived from the fact that he is rebellious and uses ink as his form of expression, although he didn’t anticipate the many confused patrons who think his store is a tattoo parlor.
The shop began printing clothing for local schools and groups, while Todd continued making clever shirts on his own. Soon his son Elijah was born and Todd found himself unimpressed by the selection of baby clothing.
“The choices are just crap,” Todd said. “It’s all teddy bears and butterflies and foo-foo this or that, so I got into black.”
According to employee Jessica Jennings, shortly after Elijah was born Todd bulk-ordered black onesies (snapsuits). He began printing sayings on the clothing that would make him smile.
He displayed a few baby items among the adult products; he found customers grabbed the baby clothing and he realized he was onto something.
Todd switched his focus to baby wear and founded Rebel Ink Baby. Now, through promoting at trade shows and on-line the clothing can be found in more than 70 stores and 27 states.
One of Todd’s “models” daughter Lucy wearing the newest slogan, ‘I live in a gated community.’
“Stay-at-home moms are hopping on [to blog sites] during nap time and talking with each other,” Jennings said.
Wing Tran, manager at Pacifer, a baby clothing store in Minneapolis, was one Todd’s first wholesale purchasers. “People enjoy the edginess of the line; they were one of the very first to have black onesies,” Tran said.
Not only is the color edgy, the sayings on the front are too. A note on the wall from a Rebel Ink Baby customer states, “I like to wear mine to Catholic preschool and shock everyone.” Examples include, ‘100 percent orgasmically created’ and ‘fastest swimmer’ with a graphic of a sperm get noticed and receive a lot of laughs, along with a few criticisms.
In addition to being one of her store’s best selling products, Tran enjoys supporting a local company. According to MN2020 research fellow Lee Egerstrom, when consumers purchase locally 25 cents more of their retail dollar will go back into the local economy compared to shopping at a big box store, such as Kmart or Wal-Mart.
Todd and Jennings both agree Minnesota has aided the shop’s success by being centrally located and a place people remember. Jennings said at trade shows most companies are from Los Angeles or New York so people remember Minnesota, “they usually make fun of it with a ‘you betcha’ joke,” she said. “But, if it makes you remember me then I’m fine with it.”
While the company is not recession-proof, Todd said, it is involved with wholesale, e-tail, retail and custom wear so that it seems when one area dies down another picks up.
Balancing the many aspects of the shop and the duties of being a husband, father and agent for his two models (Elijah, almost four, and Lucy, almost two) while his wife works a corporate job - makes Todd joke about his belief in cloning.
“There is always something to do,” Todd said. “It’s Saturday afternoon and I’m at home watching TV and folding boxes… I wake up and I’m firing up the laptop over breakfast, then the baby cries and I’m grabbing the kid and a bottle – day in and day out, it feels never-ending.”
The busyness shows no sign of letting up, according to the February 2007 issue of Retailing Today The infant and toddler market is expected to reach sales of $18.4 billion in 2010 as the U.S. Census Bureau predicts that the number of children under age two will increase by 5 percent.
With a promising future for the industry, Jennings said the company hopes to reach the million-dollar sales mark in the next few years. Todd said he doesn’t want to franchise the company and wants to stay small. Besides, between bottles, laptops and clothing Todd has his hands full. And the family is expecting their third model in July.