Beth Benike
speaker
87 appearances
1 recordings
1 series
first heard Apr 2025
last heard Apr 2025
Beth Benike’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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Appearances
Now you're tying it up so nothing else can get produced, getting the material ready. China was willing to do a minimum order quantity that first round of 1,000 units.
Exactly. And unlike, you know, maybe tech startups or other small businesses that get funding, I was bootstrapping. I sold my car. I used my tax return. I borrowed $35,000 from my stepdad. I still owe him that actually. So I ended up doing a 5,000 unit run because I wanted to do multiple colors. So when I launched the product in 2019, I blasted my entire email list.
Probably like old high school boyfriends got an email saying I was launching a baby product. And the initial orders were mostly from friends and family. But the first time I got an order from someone I didn't know of, and then they left me a positive review, I knew that was, like, everything was going to be okay. Next up is a solution to a common problem for babies.
So part of my original email list that went out when I launched the product included a Shark Tank producer whose email I had gotten previously when they were looking for veterans to feature on the show. Hi, Sharks. My name is Beth Fimbo. I'm from Rochester, Minnesota, and I'm here seeking $250,000 for 5% of my business, Busy Baby. Wow. That ultimately led me to being on Shark Tank.
I filmed during the pandemic in 2020 and then aired in March of 2021.
10%?
I think 20%- It was the most amazing experience. It was surreal. I would love to do this with you for 15. I can't go past 15.
I can't do it. I can't.
Thank you for your time.
Good luck to you. Thank you guys. I am rooting for you. Thanks. I just, I'm very confident in myself and my plans and what I'm doing. And I really think I can do it. I just wasn't willing to give up 18%. The weekend we aired, we had about six weeks worth of sales in three days. It's unreal. We sold so many busy baby mats. It was just amazing.
We have a line of products that range from $10 to $30. But the Hero product, the one everybody knows from Shark Tank, that runs $30 retail.
I mean, I think lifetime sales were over $15 million.
There's my brother and I full-time, and then we have three other full-time employees. And then we just brought on two part-time employees to help us. I was just named, actually, less than a month ago. The SBA gave me a wonderful award.
Yep. Small Business Administration awarded me Small Business Person of the Year for Minnesota.
And then this past November, we launched in Walmart for the first time. And then just last month, we launched in Target. For a business our size, that's massive. Huge. It was years of effort to get there.
So I think what a lot of people don't know is— You make a contract with the retailers. You agree to a certain price that they're going to pay for your product. And then it's a risk for me. Like, we don't know how it's going to sell. But we know we have this contract and it lasts a year. And we've made the guarantee that we're going to supply them with product for this year.
And so I had to take out additional loans to cover that cost. So I have SBA loans through my bank. But because I already had other debt, I had to leverage my personal property as collateral to get the loan.
Yep. Big deal. Big deal. Big risk. Big risk. And every small business that eventually ends up in one of those retailers, it's the biggest risk.
I mean, we expected the tariffs. Up until that point, we haven't ever paid tariffs. Our product falls into a category that hasn't had tariffs. We pay tax and duty, but we haven't had tariffs to date. So we knew that was going to be a new thing for us, and we budgeted expecting reasonable tariffs of 20 to 30 percent.
Yeah, we knew that was coming. An overwhelming number of people voted Donald Trump into office, and he talked nonstop that that was something that was going to happen. So we expected to have tariffs. Never in a million years would I expect that tariff would be 145%. Never.
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