PARENTS: PART 2
Full Disclosure: This post was intended to follow Parents Part 1: College way back in September so we encourage you to go back and read that blog post if you are so inclined. It was all about the phenomenon we’ve been happy to lean into around parents seeking spirit-related products based on their kids’ colleges. But as we enter the season of Mother’s & Father’s Day, it seems our procrastination paid off and the timing actually works out for this post which is all about parents, grandparents and families seeking family-related products
Way back when we first launched Zo Much More, one of the very first custom requests we got was from one of our biggest supporters, my friend of nearly 50 years and Zo Much More Guest Blogger: CJ. He customized what he called a blue "tritone" bracelet with the first initial of each of his 3 kids, S, A & E. (Side note, he then showed it to one of his kids who seemed puzzled by his father's choice of 3 seemingly random letters - but that's not important right now.) I remember thinking it was brilliant at the time - realizing that while most of the Moms I knew had some sort of “Mom Jewelry” but I could think of very few Dads with anything comparable.
From there, we started to receive other requests from parents & grandparents for products with something special that related to their kids or grandkids - maybe their birthstones, initials, sport of choice or the grandparent name they are called. Sometimes they were for the parent/grandparent and other times they were to give to their kids or grandkids.
One of Zoe’s teachers came up with the idea of the New Parent Stack. She would choose a color theme and have Zoe make a set of 3 bracelets for each parent - typically one had the baby's name, one had the baby's initials and the third had their parent name, (e.g. "Mom" or "Dad"). We loved the idea then and we loved it again when one of the recipient couples had a second baby and Zoe was able to make another bracelet with the new baby’s name to add to the original stack. Truly a perfect - and scaleable - new parent gift if we do say so ourselves. Another twist on the baby gift has been the card/picture holders - maybe one personalized for a new baby and one giving equal time for the older sibling - or a whole suite of baby-related items.
There have been so many more variations of the theme as you might imagine. One of our favorites had the baby's initials on one side of the bracelet - and his birthday on the other side. Another was to make a stack where each bracelet had a different grandchild’s name. And we’ve had fun challenges to put each family member’s name into the same bracelet or to make 2-stacks for siblings where gets one with their own name/initial and they each get one of the same with some common theme - a favorite beach, sport, etc.
And as always, we love seeing pictures of parents & grandparents wearing their bracelets while with their kids & grandkids and/or just living their everyday lives.
