I never really thought of myself as an entrepreneur, but when a friend and I came up with an idea for a fun reveal for a gender reveal party, things just fell into place. My husband commented, “I bet people would buy that.” And we said, “I bet we could make that.” And a business was born.
Way back in 2011, gender reveal parties were a fairly new, almost-unheard-of celebration. My friend, Stephanie, and I were very early adopters to try to capitalize on the trend. We were the first Etsy sellers of revealers, and we launched our shop with the jumbo confetti balloon revealer. We were profitable almost instantly, and soon had a growing business on our hands, adding additional products and designs to the shop.
Over the years, I read a ton of blogs and articles about the many faults of the gender reveal party. How they were indulgent, selfish, boring, and ridiculous. I never really gave this much thought. In my opinion, gender reveal parties were a fun way to celebrate your new baby and get excited about the new little person who would be joining the family. I thought the parties were especially nice for a second or third child, who often wasn’t even celebrated with a baby shower since the family often already had the “stuff.” Celebrating a baby without the pressure to buy gifts? Win win, if you ask me.
I threw gender reveal parties for both of my children. Maybe my family and friends complained behind my back, but on the surface it seemed like everyone had a good time. For my first, we had blue-frosting-filled cupcakes. For my second, we wowed our guests with a pink volcano reveal (a variation of which Stephanie and I would later sell in the shop). These were exciting, fun celebrations.
But after several years of selling confetti push-pops and balloon revealers to hundreds of moms-to-be, I was ready to call it quits. And it wasn’t just because dealing with emotional pregnant ladies all the time was wearing on me. So why would I walk away from a profitable business with my best friend?
If you’ve read this previous post of mine, this probably won’t come as a surprise. The whole pink-or-blue thing started to bug me. Do I think only boys like blue and only girls like pink? Absolutely not. Do I think a person’s gender identity always matches up with their genitals? Also no. But do I think it’s OK and even nice to know something about the little person growing in that belly? Yes.
By the time we had my daughter’s gender reveal party, I knew two pieces of information about her: she had female genitalia, and she got the hiccups ALL. THE. TIME. I still wanted to celebrate that baby, and I still wanted a fun way to tell my oldest child that he was having a little sister. We can argue all day about whether I should have thrown a Hiccups Party for her instead, but in the end it was a gender reveal that blossomed into a business.
But back to why I quit. My kids were growing up. I had a boy and a girl, and they were not oblivious to the marketing thrown at them. They could identify so-called boy toys or girl toys, and they knew what colors they were supposed to wear. I frequently told them boys and girls could wear whatever they want, cut their hair however they want, and play with whatever toys they liked best. It didn’t matter whether you were a boy or a girl.
“Then why do you have all that pink stuff for girls and blue stuff for boys?”
Busted. The kids had noticed my stash of gender reveal supplies and I wasn’t fooling anyone. I felt like a huge hypocrite. Sure, I taught my kids that gender wasn’t the most important thing about them, but then I sold party supplies that focused only on that one thing. Huh.
After much discussion about the future of our shop, Stephanie and I decided to shut its online only doors and move on. We were proud of what we had accomplished. No matter what you’re selling, starting a business is never easy, and we learned a lot along the way.
But we were ready to focus on much more important things—like teaching our kids that they can do and be anything they want.
