How Tushbaby Changed Baby Carriers and Reached $50 Million in Sales

Sure, babies can be the apples of your eyes. But carrying it around can be a pain in the neck. And the arms, shoulders, back and various other parts of your body. Tammy Rant felt this before she designed a new type of baby carrier on the hip seat in the summer of 2017. And oh baby, that solution has taken off since then. It eventually led to her co-founding the company with Sara Azadi Tushbaby which has already generated more than $50 million in sales over the past two years.

Necessity is the mother of invention

“[The Summer of 2017] That was shortly after I had my second daughter, who was a “Velcro baby” and hated the stroller,” recalls Rant, who was working at LinkedIn at the time. By “Velcro baby” she didn’t mean a baby made of Velcro, which would have been weird, but a baby who was quite clingy and wanted to be carried often. Rant had to take much of this situation literally, including rotator cuff issues. She also developed sciatica due to strain on her back.

At the time, she couldn’t find an option that wasn’t too complicated, uncomfortable or inflexible. “I wanted something that made it easy to get up and down with the baby, took the strain off the body, back and arms and was comfortable to carry. I also wanted to have storage space so I didn’t have to carry a diaper bag or stroller.”

That led to a pretty hip idea. She designed a device that would wrap around her hip and have a seat for the baby to sit on. This allowed the baby’s weight to be supported by her hips instead of the arms, shoulders and other parts of the body. Rant knew she was onto something after she wore the prototype to a local park in San Francisco, California, and was practically attacked by twelve parents who asked her where they could buy what she was using. The answer at the time, of course, was that they couldn’t buy it anywhere. But that would soon change.

Diving (or maybe wading) in the ‘Shark Tank’

Two months after designing the first prototype, in August 2017, Rant applied to appear on the ABC TV show Shark tank. Over the next six months, she worked with designers, manufacturers and pediatricians to make this hip-seat carrier more refined and trendier so it could become a marketable product.

Rant hasn’t heard anything since Shark tank until, guess what, she was pregnant with her third baby and suffering from hyperemesis gravidarum for the third time, because that’s how life works sometimes, right? HG is basically a turbocharged version of morning sickness. So after a Shark Tank representative called to request a 7- to 10-minute audition video, Rant had to film the video in between vomit episodes with the help of her extended family member, including her sister-in-law Riley Fane, who is now Tushbabies. Creative director. After submitting the video, Rant had to wait again. And wait. And wait before you finally get the message that she has moved on to the next round.

The birth of Tushbaby

At the time, Rant did not have any company and was therefore afraid that he would be ‘eaten alive’ in the Shark tank. So in May 2018, she launched a Kickstarter campaign and filmed an accompanying video, again while in the throes of all that vomiting. Just a few days after the Kickstarter campaign launched on May 8, Rant discovered through a Facebook tag that the Daily mail had covered the Tushbaby campaign. This quickly led to more media attention and ultimately more than 50 million views of the campaign and associated sales. The Kickstarter closed at $124,000. Shortly afterwards, Rant flew to Los Angeles to shoot the film next appearance Shark tank:

Rant eventually co-founded the company Tushbaby with Sarah Azadi, who was previously executive vice president for Edelman and headed the company’s digital marketing office. Azadi herself had suffered from carrying her baby. Azadi said she had “mommy thumb,” also known as “baby wrist,” “cradle thumb” or De Quervain’s tenosynovitis, which is slightly more difficult to pronounce. Guess which of these terms is the official medical term for this condition. De Quervain’s tenosynovitis is the inflammation or swelling of the tendons on the thumb side of your wrist. Azadi also faced pain in her arms and shoulders and underwent surgery when her child was three and a half years old.

“My baby was attached to my hip, a stage 3 clinger,” Azadi recalls. “When I saw what Tammy had designed, I thought, ‘Why wasn’t this there?’” Rant and Azadi didn’t originally plan to become entrepreneurs. Both had stable jobs at established companies. Rant, who was originally from Egypt, and Azadi, originally from Iran, were not looking for a potentially more financially risky situation. But as Azadi emphasized, “We were going to solve a problem.” This turned out to be a good match with “Tammy’s design concept of the product,” Azadi explained. “She is a real go-getter, operationally oriented. I took care of the marketing. In the beginning we did all the customer service.”

Continue with the business

Tushbaby has now grown into an operation of 15 people. While the original overall design remains the same, Rant and Azadi mentioned “minor improvements” such as “extra lumbar support” and “new types of fabrics.” They highlighted how they discussed the changes with pediatricians and incorporated customer feedback. Azadi also said, “There are many copycats who have tried to copy the concept of a hip belt.” She added: “But they haven’t put in the effort, time and investment and have cut corners. Many do not do safety testing.”

Meanwhile, Tushbaby continues to grow “100% year over year,” Azadi said. “We’ve only just scratched the surface.” Although the company has grown to fifteen people, Rant and Azadi continue to play multiple roles, both professional and family. “We both have families to support,” they said. At the same time, they and their company are also supporting more and more babies through the baby pillows.