Minnesota company will soon see its baby products on Walmart, Target shelves across the country

Busy Baby has faced pressure before. After a stint on "Shark Tank," orders skyrocketed for the then-tiny company.

But this fall, founder Beth Fynbo Benike and her crew have had to learn all-new processes. The company in Oronoco, about 10 miles north of Rochester, scored contracts with both Walmart and Target, laying a pathway to making it a national brand in the $16 billion baby-products industry and thrusting Busy Baby into the highly competitive world of megastore merchandising.

Fynbo Benike will be featured in Walmart's Veterans Day ad campaign, which launches Oct. 21. The country's largest retail chain will start selling the baby placemats and other accessories in 250 of its stores Nov. 4, just in time for the holiday retail rush.

In March, Target will start selling the products in 200 to 300 stores.

Fynbo Benike spent 10 years in the Army, serving in military intelligence, as an embedded journalist during the Iraqi war and as an Army broadcaster in Kuwait, Italy and Kosovo before returning to her hometown of Albert Lea in 2006.

The Walmart ads are part of a campaign designed to honor military veterans who became business owners and then suppliers. That's Fynbo Benike and her brother Eric Fynbo, who also served in the Army and who joined Busy Baby a few years ago.

"It's exciting," said Fynbo Benike.

But some days it's surreal, she said. Hours after flying back from New York, where she filmed Walmart's commercial, she asked her brother: "Like when we were sitting through the sandstorms in Iraq, did we ever think one day we'd be schlepping baby products together down the road?"

Busy Baby started by making a suctioned placemat with tethered accessories that can entertain an infant while adults talk or eat. In 2018, Fynbo Benike spent $16,000 designing a prototype with Klugonyx, a Utah product development firm with factories in China.

She hired a lawyer, scored her first sale in 2019 and started racking up design patents. Now there are other products such as Busy Baby silicone bibs with food-catching pouches, tethered pacifiers and bumpy "teething spoons."

"They are all tethered," Fynbo Benike said. "Our goal is to keep everything off the ground."

So far Busy Baby has $15 million in sales, mostly through online orders and 400 small retail stores such as Little Roos in Chaska and My Happy Place in Zumbrota. Along the way, Fynbo Benike won a division prize in the Minnesota Cup competition, won another startup contest and in 2019 appeared on "Shark Tank," receiving an investment offer but walking away from it because she didn't like the terms.

As the company grew, it moved from Fynbo Benike's basement to her garage, and then to a neighbor's pole barn. In May 2022, she bought a former farm that came with three warehouses. She rents two and works in the third.

"So now we ... have one consolidated location for the warehouse and distribution center," she said.

That's where Fynbo Benike and Eric were Tuesday, hauling cases into 18 piles and nine rows of products headed to Walmart distribution centers in Illinois, Tennessee, Michigan and other states.

"We're packing 51 different orders to send to Walmart in the next few days," she said.

Nilka Garcia, senior manager of supplier inclusion for Walmart, stumbled across Busy Baby while searching online for new suppliers who are female veterans.

Garcia added Busy Baby to a long list of firms around the country and didn't think much of it until April, when she attended a luncheon for veterans and watched as Fynbo Benike brought to the podium one of her placemats as she received a business award.

"That's when it hit me. I recognized it right away," Garcia said. Afterward, the two connected and the difficult process of securing the contract began.

"She has such a beautiful, innovative product that I know it's gonna resonate with our customers," Garcia said. "I'm very proud of her."

The contracts with Minneapolis-based Target and Arkansas-based Walmart are both good for at least one year.

"Winning business with Walmart or Target is always cause for celebration for a small business," said Carol Spieckerman, an Arkansas-based retail consultant. "It's an exciting kickstart for Busy Baby," she said, but one that comes with risks that will have to be carefully managed if the new relationships are to last long term.

Big box retailers can have unprecedented inventory demands. Busy Baby will need to backfill fast-selling stock while mitigating losses when certain products lag on the shelf, she said.

Fynbo Benike said the retailers have done a good job onboarding the company. But being a megastore supplier is very different than dealing with independent stores.

Walmart "has very strict requirements" for packaging, box labels and bar codes and they change depending on whether the items are sold via Walmart Marketplace, Walmart.com or in a Walmart store.

"We haven't done this before so there is a learning curve," said Fynbo Benike while replacing one errant label with the right one.

"I am reading and learning all of their requirements so we don't get a demerit," said Eric, while checking and rechecking stacks of preprinted labels and rows of boxes. "Walmart and their team have done all they can do to help with onboarding us, but its hundreds if not thousands of requirements and stuff to do. There are big companies that have entire departments doing what we are trying to do for the first time."

The siblings do not take anything for granted.

"The biggest challenge we have is brand awareness," Fynbo Benike said.

Most people taking a survey at the Minnesota State Fair had never heard of Busy Baby. At the same time, the firm's attorney has been busy, so far finding 200 products on Amazon that have violated Busy Baby's patents.

Plus, Busy Baby will have hefty competition, Spieckerman said.

"Busy Baby operates in a highly competitive category that is dominated by massive, multi-national brands that have been at the game for a long time," she said. "These brands have the scale and sourcing expertise to ensure razor-sharp prices, and many are highly diversified so they can absorb losses more easily than niche brands."

But Busy Baby has an advantage. "Major retailers are favoring brands that have compelling origin stories, loyal followings, and of course, great products," she said. Busy Baby has a loyal online following and Walmart and Target "will definitely" like that.