When Alison Musser and her husband traveled to North Carolina’s Outer Banks, the vacation turned stressful when they couldn’t find a crib for their one-year-old daughter. “We called every hotel to see if they had a crib available,” recalls Musser.
While the Mussers were able to eventually rent a crib, the difficulty in finding one helped to birth
Babies Travel Too. The company rents cribs and other baby equipment to parents traveling to Cleveland who don’t or can’t lug all the necessities with them.
“It seemed like a no-brainer,” Musser says of the business idea. “It’s impossible to bring everything you really need for a child when you’re traveling. If you’re flying into town, we’ll meet you at the airport.” Musser will also deliver to area hotels, Cedar Point or someone’s house.
Musser researched the idea and found she could provide a resource for traveling families. “What we found out was that even large hotels – with 300 rooms – only have three to four cribs.”
Babies Travel Too rents everything from cribs and car seats to baby monitors and bouncer seats. “We do a lot of high chair rentals,” Musser says. “We even do boxes of toys. That’s been really popular.”
Babies Travel Too recently won $25,000 in
Bad Girl Ventures’ business plan competition, which Musser plans to use for marketing. “People don’t even know they can look for this type of service,” she says.
The long term goal is to expand Babies Travel Too to a national level. In the meantime, Musser is hiring a couple of delivery drivers to help her out with the summer peak season.
Source: Alison Musser
Writer: Karin Connelly