No Products? No Problem

How Fridababy went from a three-person team with $10,000 in the bank to a baby-care empire sold in 30,000 stores.

- Joe Keohane

Chelsea Hirschhorn was in a bind. Her infant-products company, Frida baby, was profitable. But if it was going to grow, she needed more products. The problem was, she had no design experience, no R&D staff, no money, and no time. 

Like we said: a bind. 

She hadn’t started as an entrepreneur. In law school she did a stint with the New York Mets. Then she was a bankruptcy attorney during the recession. After that, she moved to south Florida and landed a gig with the Miami Marlins.

One night in 2013, while Hirschhorn was pregnant with her first child, a neighbor told her about a product she was importing from Sweden, the NoseFrida. It was “an oral nasal aspirator”—that is, a tube parents use to suck snot out of their babies’ congested noses. The neighbor wanted to see if Hirschhorn was interested in the business. She was not.