This week, I’m sitting down with Ben Norment, founder of Stork Exchange, the modern marketplace giving open box, overstock, and returned baby products a new purpose.
In a world where 20% of returned baby gear ends up in landfills, most of it never even used, Stork Exchange, based in Charlotte, NC, is building a smarter, more sustainable way for families to shop. By rescuing top-brand products from the waste stream and making them available at major discounts, Stork Exchange is helping parents save money, reduce waste, and make more thoughtful choices for their families and the planet.
- Website: www.storkexchange.co
- Instagram: Follow Stork Exchange here
Episode Highlights:
- What is baby gear open box & overstock?
- How do you select merchants to work with?
- What happens to most returns & the environmental impact?
- How often are new products added?
Sleep Struggles Solved + Results Guaranteed
[xyz-ihs snippet=”Transcript-Start”]
Welcome to The Kids Sleep Show podcast, where we dive into the magical world of sleep and all things parenting. Join us as we embark on a journey filled with expert advice, practical tips, and heartwarming stories that will transform your little ones into sleep superheroes and empower you to navigate the beautiful chaos of parenting. I’m your host, Courtney Zents, and I’m on a mission to change how the world views sleep and provide accessible sleep coaching resources for all families to build healthy sleep habits in their home for children and adults of all ages. As an award winning speaker, author, and pediatric sleep expert, myself and my team of consultants work intimately with families around the world to teach healthy sleep habits to children and adults. I believe wholeheartedly that sleep is the foundation for which a happy home is built.
So let’s sleep together. Hey, everyone. Welcome to the Kids Sleep Show podcast. Thanks so much for tuning in this week. I am joined by the founder and CEO of Stork Exchange, mister Ben Norman.
Ben, take a minute and introduce you and tell us a little bit about what Stork Exchange is for those listeners that have not yet heard of you. Yeah. Thanks so much, Courtney. So as you said, my name is Ben Norman, and I run Stork Exchange, which is a curated online marketplace for open box and overstock baby gear. We work with, some the brands and retailers that you love, making products like the Zoey’s twin stroller, Baby Katan baby wraps, Tushbaby, baby carriers, to process their returns and inspect inspect them.
And when they’re good to go, which is, you know, 90% of all returns, we take them and we sell them back to parents at a great discounted price. It helps keep, gear that’s perfectly usable out of the landfill and helps parents save money on some of those essential kid items, that, as we all know, add up very quickly. At home, I am the proud dad of a four year old, a two year old, and a soon to come third. So, you know, slowly building out my family, have a garage that is overflowing with strollers and trikes and, all sorts of kids’ gear. So I am, very well versed in this from both a professional and a personal standpoint.
Awesome. I love it. As they grow, my kids got, the red when we were kids, you know, the little red wagon, the red flyer. Yeah. What is that thing called?
The radio flyer, some kind of thing? Yeah. The little radio flyer wagon. Yeah. They sell go karts now.
So wait till your kids are old enough. They have go kart. And my my seven year old is, like, zooming around the call just back with her little helmet on. But it’s fun. What a fun age.
I’m glad you’re here because I, you know, I think to your point, right, baby products, there’s a lot of them. And I think parents order a ton of different stuff, and you’re doing a lot of it online because you don’t necessarily know what it is that, you’re gonna need or one. And sometimes you get a lot of stuff that you, you know, maybe you registered for. Maybe it was just a gift from grandma. And I think to your point, keeping a lot of stuff out of the landfills.
So take me on the journey of where the idea for Stork Exchange came from. Yeah. So, we originally actually started as a platform for parents to buy and sell their used gear or to to sell their own used gear and for other parents to buy it. And and that idea really came as we were expecting our first. And, I’ve we visited, my brother-in-law and his wife and and their firstborn, and they had this, townhome in DC.
And this place was just, like, filled with baby products. Like, there was not a spare entry to that home that did not have a bassinet or swing or something in it. And I was just like, oh my god. Like, this is we’re gonna have to get all of this stuff. And, you know, my brother-in-law is like, yeah.
And all of it serves a purpose. And you’re you know, the best one is like the SNOO, which is, you know, $1,500 and you’re gonna use it for four months and but you’re gonna sleep, so it’s definitely worth it. And you’re like and I was just like, this is insane. Like, this just is it’s so much stuff for this little tiny baby. And, so I got I started getting really into the secondhand market, and all the kind of, you know, pain points that come along with that.
And as I talked to other friends who had kids and other family members who had kids, you know, the consensus I kind of consistently heard was, we’d love to buy you more used stuff, both because, like, it would save us money. My kid’s gonna destroy it anyways. Whatever. And but everyone was just like, I don’t have time to deal with Craigslist. It’s a pain in the butt to deal with Facebook Marketplace, to either sell my stuff or to buy stuff.
And so they just kinda were like, it’s much easier to just go on Amazon and, like, one click shop that and have it show up on my doorstep two days later. And so I was like, okay. Well, what if we could, like, make this process better? You know, what if there’s a way that, you know, you could make a nice easy online shopping experience for people buying and an easy selling experience for people selling? And so that’s what we set out to do.
And, you know, we launched in 2021, two months after my daughter was born, and we launched with just baby carriers. We were like, well, let’s see if we can, let’s see if anyone would buy a used baby product from this random website on the Internet. You know, I went around. I bought up probably every used baby carrier that was being sold in Charlotte, on Facebook Marketplace and Craigslist for, like, three months. Got them all, cleaned them, took photographs, put them on the website, and, you know, we started selling them.
And it was like, okay. You know, this this could work. And we we kind of at steadily added products. We would go. We would pick up products from parents in Charlotte and and list them on the website.
And as we grew, it it it kind of got harder to to keep up a steady supply of of products. You know, that was always the hardest part was, you know, getting stuff in. It’s it’s hard to to ship a stroller all the way across the country. And, you know, it kind of ran into the the the challenge of the fact that in some ways, it’s it’s just a model that works really well locally, but it’s hard to work, you know, on a national scale. But at the same time, we we started discovering, this huge stream of returns, in the baby space.
You know, we, you know, we talked to kind of liquidators or or stores that were, you know, trying to deal with, you know I have all these return products. Like, what am I what am I gonna do with them? And a lot of the big retailers, Amazon, Target, at the time, Buy Buy Baby, which still existed. You know, they just sell them off to these kind of, like, big aggregators who would sell, you know, a truckload of pallets to to a bin store and, you know, kind of just offload it and it’d be like, maybe you got a working mama rue, maybe you got the broken mama rue. You don’t know.
But you only paid $2, so, you know, maybe it’s worth seeing. And it was like, So there’s this massive stream of returns in the baby space, and a lot you know, 90% of those products are perfectly good. Like, we could sell those. We could turn around and we could sell those. We could we could work with the brands to help them, you know, control this flow of product a little better, make sure that people who are buying are getting good quality products that are safe or usable, and prevent anything from ending up in the landfill that didn’t have to.
I think a lot of people I mean, you know, I think this is true of a lot of us nowadays. Like, right, you buy something on Amazon and you don’t like it or it’s not quite the way it looked in the picture, and you’re like, oh, I’m just gonna send it back. And, you know, you kinda stop thinking about it at that point. And I think I’ve certainly used to just kinda think like, oh, they’ll, you know, repackage it and and sell it again. And that’s true for some things, but for a lot of stuff, they just they just destroy it or or salvage it.
And, it’s particularly true in the baby space where, you know, you have these products that are very packaged, you know, a lot of custom packaging. There’s a lot of concern from the brands. You know, they don’t want to sell, a a car seat that’s potentially been used or a product that might be defective. And so for them, they’ve kind of just made this calculation that it’s easier to just destroy it or or kind of, you know, send it off and whitewash their hands of it then actually kind of say, like, oh, what could we turn around and resell? Or, you know, could we resell this as as, you know, open box or as a floor model or something like that?
And so that’s where we’ve we’ve stepped in, and we so we work directly with the brands. We plug right into their supply chain. When their customers return a product, instead of going back to their warehouse or their Amazon warehouse, it’ll come to us. We’ll manage the return process for them, letting them know if they need to to, you know, provide a refund. We’ll inspect the items, make sure that they’re resellable, make sure they’re clean and have all the parts and that they’re, you know, not broken.
And then we’ll resell it to customers at, you know, 30 to 50% off retail price, and ship it to them. They can easily shop our where our website. They, you know, see see a photo of the item, a description. They can understand exactly what condition it is. We have we have different condition grades, from overstock to, you know, a certified returned, in, excellent or good condition.
And, you know, they they click checkout, they put in their address, put in their credit card, and it shows up on their doorstep three to five days later. So it’s an easy end to end process for the the customers. It’s an easy end to end process for the retailers and brands. And, you know, overall, we like to think we’re we’re helping both sides end up a little better off than they would have otherwise. Yeah.
I think that’s great. You know? And, I mean, to your point, you sort of forget that, you know, our shopping experience today as adults, as just consumers in general, is so different than it was fifteen years ago or even when my son was born ten years ago. You know? And so everything we’re buying is, like, online.
Like, my husband just got new jeans from Gap, and they were dad jeans. And I was like, oh my gosh. And he’s like, these I gotta send these back. These look ridiculous. You know?
And so I just sent them back to Amazon. But, yeah, I’d be sitting here thinking like, are they actually gonna go back into, like, gaps, you know, sort of, supply chain, or are they gonna go and get shredded? You know? And I’m like, they’re perfectly fine. He just tried them on and looked kinda like a doofus.
You know? I hope he’s not listening. He doesn’t generally listen, but, you know, but he also thinks he look like a doofus. So so not just me. But, you know, they were you know?
But it’s it’s it’s interesting because I think we we sort of go, alright. Well, I can return it. Right? So you’re like rock, paper, scissors. I’ll order the big baby thing.
And if I like it, cool. If I don’t, whatever. I’ll send it back because you don’t get to touch things anymore, you know, in any aspect of the process for parenting. The stores are so limited in their inventory, especially, you know, if you want the certain brands and stuff. So, I mean, I think just your mission overall is really cool.
One, you’re saving the product from the landfill, which I think, you know, in this day and age is important, but these products are perfectly fine. You know? Like, if it’s an open box item or it’s, you know, an overflow or, like, we made too much, like, heck, yeah. We can get any day of the week. Kids are expensive.
You know? And you do need stuff. You probably don’t need as much as your brother-in-law had in DC, but, you don’t know. Like, especially as new parents, like, you just kinda get everything and you go, I think this is we’re good. You know?
And then, like, the first week, the baby’s home. You’re like, I forgot gas drops. You know? Whoops. You know?
But tell me a little bit about, like so how does the process work from an inventory standpoint? You’re obviously always looking to get new products that are out and, like, working with different partners. I know you have a bunch on the docket that, you know, hopefully, by the time this airs in a couple weeks, you’ll have those contracts signed, which should be fabulous. But, you know, how often are you updating the inventories? Like, every Tuesday, I think I saw, like, there’s some like, what what does the typical flow look like if parents were like, hey.
But I’m checking this episode out on a Wednesday when it dropped. Like, let me see what you’ve got out at Stork Exchange. Yeah. So when we when we started, we we were kind of, like, in a a a turn of, like, every Tuesday, we would upload new products. Now as we’ve kind of grown and and are continuing to to update, more regularly, and have a bigger team and can kind of push things live more more frequently.
You know, our our inventory, frankly, is honestly change every always changing. There’s always new products being uploaded. We, you know, we have we’re very good friends with our our local UPS and USPS drivers. We have, you know, both of those companies coming by every day to drop off return you know, packages of returns that we will inspect and process and have up within, you know, a couple of days available for purchase on the website. From some of the bigger retailers, you know, we’ll have a truckload come in, you know, once, twice a month for certain brands, inventory, and, you know, we’ll steadily add that to the site over the course of a month.
But it’s it’s truly, honestly, always changing. You know, we still send out, an email every Tuesday. So sign up for our newsletter, and we’ll highlight some of the newer items that we’ve gotten, and some of, you know, some of our favorites, you know, either kind of for seasonally or just products that we we really love. So parents can always check those out that way. You know, as as we’ve moved more towards this brand partnership model, you know, some of our inventory is a little more reliable.
If you’re if you’re partnered with, a brand like Zoe, you cannot always kinda know well. There’s a good chance they’re going to have a Zoe tour or Zoe twin in stock, at some point because that those are the products, you know, we sell the most of, and they’re the products we get the most of in in return from them. Of course, you know, with Zoe, frankly, like, it’s hard for us to keep them in stock. You know, they’re they’re great strollers. And They’re awesome strollers.
Yeah. They’re awesome strollers. They’re fantastic. Our kids love our twin, and, you know, they don’t discount their own products very often. I think they do it maybe once a year at Black Friday.
And so when parents see the chance to get that open box twin for 30% off, they’re like, heck yes. I’m gonna buy that. And so, you know, that’s really where where you’re gonna wanna be checking back is is for some of those products that are really popular. We’ve we’ve typically carried a lot of VISTAs, through, a partnership with with, department store, as well as, like, Bugaboo Butterflies, and and those are also products that disappear really quickly. So if there’s that product that you’re kinda like, hey.
This is a product that I I know I really want it. It’s always worth checking our site regularly. You can sign up for out of stock notifications on our website if there’s a product you really want, or a certain color that you really want, and you’ll get notified as soon as we have it back. And, if it’s one of those products that moves quickly, I’d I’d certainly suggest by buying it quickly when you see that notification. Now I know a lot of people from a baby standpoint.
Right? Like, you’re a grandparent and, you know, we don’t get a ton of grandparents listening to our podcast, but you might be a mom who’s expecting. Right? Or somebody who’s got a friend who’s expecting their first kid, and you’ve already kind of you’re here and you you’re in the thick of it already. And you wanna get your friend something nice that they’re gonna use, but you also realize baby’s expensive.
Right? Talk do you guys offer gift cards? And, like, you know, I think that’s, like, a really smart play these days is, like, the ability to get someone a gift card for something like this that they can go, okay. Well, when I do know I need that or when I’m watching and you guys have it, like, they have this gift card to use. So Yeah.
So we we do offer gift cards, which you can give, and you can enter your recipient’s email address, and they’ll they’ll get the email with all the information they need to make a purchase. We’re also, you know, we have a a I think one of the things that has always been challenging with with secondhand is how do you add secondhand items to a registry? You know, I know a few people who have been like, I only want people to buy me secondhand products, but it’s really hard to be like, okay. I want this stroller, but please buy it secondhand, which means you need to go out and search Craigslist or Facebook market locally to try and find that product. And, you know, maybe you found it and you send someone the link, but by the time you have, they’re like, oh, no.
Someone else has already bought this. Right? Or even on eBay. Right? Someone buys it.
You click on the link. Oh, this product is no longer available. The way we manage our inventory allows us to kind of have pages. So say that, you know, that Vista, you want that Vista secondhand, and we have a page where that, you know, that lives forever. And you can send someone that link, and when they click it, they’ll see, oh, like, you know, these are the four colors that they have, and I want to go in and and click the Noah one.
And, oh, it’s available in, certified return excellent condition and it’s available in overstock condition. Which one do I think the person I’m buying for would want? And, you know, that way you can buy it. And and so we’re giving people the ability to really add these products to their registry and allow people to kind of say, hey. I want you to buy a more sustainable option, whether that means sustainably for the Earth or, you know, I want you to buy it more sustainably for your pocket.
I think there’s always some guilt around baby registries of being like, I want this particular product that’s that’s nice for my kids, but at the same time, I know it’s it’s not cheap. Right? I’m asking you to buy me a a thousand dollar stroller or a a $400 car seat and, you know, giving people the ability to say, like, I want this thing, but I’m totally fine if you get it for, you know, 70% of retail or or 50% of retail just because the box is gonna be a little banged up. I think that’s a great option for parents, and it allows them to really make that, you know, make sustainability part of their registry in a way that up to now is has always been kind of a pain point, I think. Yeah.
No. For sure. And I think it’s it’s interesting too because I keep seeing these ads for newly, which Kelly, who Mhmm. You know, we both know in in the baby space says her daughter’s, like, love this newly. Right?
And, it’s you know? And now that I, like, searched it, I get these ads. And it’s, like, $99 a month, and you get to get, like, five outfits or something. I’ve yet to dip my tonic because I don’t go anywhere, but, it looks really cute. You know?
And then I’ve been talking to a girlfriend at basketball. She’s like, oh, I use Nuuly. I’m like, oh my gosh. How many people use that? Like, how many people use Nuuly?
But it’s the sustainability mindset, I think, in the folks that are having kids now is so much more top of mind, especially for a variety of reasons to your point. But, like, I feel like these sites like Nuuly are taking off because people are more conscious of the environment. They’re more conscious of their pocketbooks. And I’m like, well, why would I do it full price when I could just wear it and send it back, right, for Nuuly? But for something like this, it’s the same idea.
Like, there’s just this I think a a shifting awareness to sustainability, which I think is cool, you know, especially in this age of folks that are having kids. Yeah. And I think I think having kids in some ways makes some of these concerns more top of mind because, you know, you’re thinking, well, it’s not about what does the planet look like now. It’s what is the planet gonna look like in thirty years when my kids grow up or in, you know, fifty years when my grandkids are growing up. And so those things you know, you become much more conscious of this idea that, you know, you’re a steward of the earth for future generations, and, you know, what you do now is gonna impact what your kids end up having, to deal with.
And then, you know, I I I also think, you know, we use the word sustainability a lot when we talk about this from an environmental standpoint, and then a lot of parents also use it from a financial standpoint of, you know, how do I justify spending that much money on something that I’m only gonna use for six months or seven months? It it’s a you know, you’re kind of like, that’s a a really crazy use of of funds as, you know, you think about how expensive kids are these days. You know, it’s not just the gear. It’s the, the classes and the day care costs and the medical costs and the health insurance and the the snacks and the berries. And no one told me about, you know, how expensive kids’ snacks were going to be.
And, you know, they eat them like their water, and it’s just it’s crazy. And, you know, so all that stuff adds up. And, you know, when you can say, like, okay. Well, I can save a little bit of money by not paying full price for this thing that’s perfectly good for my child. Why wouldn’t I do that?
Yeah. No. Totally. I know my son ate the whole package of raspberries last night. I’m like, that was $9.
Yeah. Yeah. Like, damn it. You know? There are no more raspberries now.
You ate all of them in one sip. Have an apple. I get a bag. You know? But it is true.
I mean, life is expensive these days. You know? And and my husband and I both work full time, and it’s like, life is still expensive these days. So I feel like with what you’re doing, it does. It just it makes so much sense for so many reasons.
I know you can’t talk about all the partnerships you have coming, because we have to hope that everything gets signed. But I can type just in the brands that you have out there now, how do people find Stork Exchange to take a look at what you’re doing? Where can they find you on social media? And, like, what do they need to know? And then I always like to end the podcast spend with, like, one piece of advice for parents from, like, a parent perspective.
Yeah. That that’s a good one. I you know? So to find us, you can go to our website, www.storkexchange.co. And so if you go there, you’ll be able to see all the products that we currently have for sale.
You can buy a gift card for a friend. You can, you know, shop for yourself. You can sign up for our email newsletter or, get notified if there’s a product you want that’s out of stock. You know, signing up for that newsletter is the best way to find out what’s going on with us. We use it to announce when we have new partners or, you know, as I said, we we highlight some of our our favorite latest new products or or kind of favorite products that we have on the site at the time, any special events or promotions that we have going.
And then same with social media. We really use Instagram primarily. It’s stork underscore exchange. So you can find us on Instagram. Give us a follow.
Again, you know, we’ll highlight a lot of the products we have in stock and the brands we partner with. Or simply Google us, stork exchange. We’re not the one in Dublin at the Dublin Airport. Sometimes people get confused. We every month, we get at least one email asking if they can rent a car seat at the Dublin Airport, and, we can’t help them.
But, probably a great company if you’re in in Ireland. Yeah. So those are those are the best ways to find us. You know, as you said, we’re hoping to you know, we’re always adding new partners. We’re we’ve have a couple really exciting partners, with brands that I know parents are are are big fans of, that we’ll hopefully be announcing, probably, hopefully, just before this podcast announce, I mean, this podcast publishes.
So, definitely come check us out, see see what new partners we’ve added to our site in the meantime. And then for advice, I it’s it’s super cliched, but I I really think, trying to slow down as much as possible, as a parent and and recognizing that, you know, the dishes can wait or the trash can wait or, you know, cleaning the house can wait. It’s easy to to kind of get caught up in in all the stuff that that needs to happen and and not just spend time with your kids. And, you know, their memories that are you know, they do last forever for you and for them and, you know, those times when you’re just playing on the floor with them and not focused on anything else, not thinking about what you need to do, they see it. They they recognize it, and, you know, you you feel it, and it’s it’s truly wonderful.
And it makes you remember why it’s all worth it, through all the the sleepless nights and and temper tantrums. So Yeah. No. I totally love that. We, just got spike ball in the backyard.
And my husband last night, I’m like, I don’t know how to play spike ball. And he’s like, it’s really not that hard. You hit the ball. You know? And I was like, alright.
So I’ll play tonight. You know? So I I totally agree. And I I don’t think kids need much. I know we always think, like, it has to be this perfectly curated.
But, you know, just sit on the floor and play Barbies for five minutes and go, so happy to have special one on one time with you. Like, kids like that. They want that. They crave that. You know?
And I know as parents, there’s always busy. There’s always something to do. But when you can take a pause and just engage with your kids, I just did a different podcast, with a company called Parent, p a r I n t, and she does, like, adventures. And, it’s like family adventures so that you have time connecting and then, you know, you go through this exercise, but it’s meant to be something that’s, like, device free adventures. So I totally just that one to one you know, it’s it does it goes fast, man.
And and, totally can echo and appreciate that. But I’ll be sure to put certainly all the Stork Exchange information in the show notes. I know that our parents are certainly always looking for awesome products and even better that they’re sustainable and at a great price. So I’m excited to share Story Exchange with the world on the Kids Sleep Ship podcast. But, actually, that’s a good point because there are listeners all over the world.
Right now, I assume you’re just shipping in The US. Just in The US. Yes. We are we’re just based in The US right now. Hopefully, maybe one day we’ll be international.
But for now, sadly, you gotta be in The US. Okay. Cool. I always like to check because I got a lot of people listening in Australia, and they’re gonna be like, I don’t wanna go to Shore Exchange. But we’re not shipping all that way yet.
But, No. But there is a similar company in Australia. I can’t think of their name right now, but I do know that Australia has a local version of Stork Exchange. And while I hate to promote a competitor, where you can’t shop us in Australia, so I might as well, you know, say there’s a way to be sustainable, in Australia too. So go do it.
Cool. All right, man. Well, thanks so much for tuning into the kid’s sleep show and, thank you for coming on Ben. And, I look forward to more people checking you out. Awesome.
Thank you so much, Courtney, for having me. It was great talking to you. Thank you. One more thing before you go. Don’t forget to subscribe, leave a review, or share this episode with someone you know who could use a little more sleep in their life.
For tips and resources, be sure to visit us at tinytransitions.com or follow us across social media. Here’s to better sleep, brighter days, and healthier, happier families.
[xyz-ihs snippet=”Transcript-End”]
