Our Thoughts on Cloth Diapers at Mainstream Baby Expos

On May 14th and 15th I attended the New York Baby Show along with Melissa Huynh, founder of Lalabye Baby Cloth Diapers. This huge, mainstream baby expo took place right in the heart of NYC, and they claimed over 20,000 people were in attendance. I can't verify those numbers, but I can say it was definitely crowded both days. Now that I'm home and I've had some time to reflect, I have a few thoughts I'd like to share.

Huge crowds at the 2016 New York Baby Show.

1. The New York Baby Show was definitely well attended, but I was shocked by how few people knew about modern cloth diapers. Many people walking up to our booth assumed we were selling reusable swim diapers, and in fact, some people bought some Lalabye Baby diapers solely for that purpose.

When we would start to explain that they were modern reusable diapers for everyday use, we would get a very mixed reaction. We had a few looks of, "Wow, really?!" followed by more questions on how they worked. Unfortunately, I'd say the most common reaction from the surprised group was, "Oh. Nevermind." followed by a quick spin on the heels and a shuffle to the next booth.

2. Some families were actually interested in learning about cloth! For every family who walked up surprised to learn that these were not swim diapers, there was another family who walked up with an eagerness to learn. They had seen our brands listen in the show program or had seen our posts on social media and started off with, "I'm so excited you guys are here. We've been thinking about using cloth diapers, but there's just so much information out there that we were feeling overwhelmed." 

This is huge. And it's actually the reason we paid the hefty price tag to attend this event. Rather than selling, we were educating. I can't even tell you how many time I must've given the spiel on using cloth diapers. Let's put it this way. My voice was pretty much gone by Sunday afternoon. ;)

This was one of a small handful of families who came by our booth and was actually already using cloth diapers at home! They bought the Spray Pal shield on the spot to make spraying their diapers easy and mess-free.

3. We weren't the only ones to notice that there was a noticeable absence of major cloth diaper brands. 

It seems in the past few years the focus by cloth diapering brands (including ours) has been attending shows like MommyCon that cater to a more natural parenting mindset. And don't get me wrong, we still love the concept behind MommyCon and are still attending a few so we can interact with our amazing customers! But this year, after a very successful cloth diaper resource booth at the 2015 Miami's Ultimate Baby Affair, we decided to make an effort to test the waters with the more mainstream events.

We're almost ready! Time for a coffee break, but I wanted to tag and thank all of these amazing sponsors of the Mission #Makeclothmainstream booth at #MUBA2015 - @sloomb @lalabyebaby @totsbots @grovia @chgdiapers @loganandlenora @projectpomona @funkyfluff @genydiapers @applecheeksdipe @tushmate @thirstiesinc @mollyssuds @balmbaby @milkincookies @smartbottoms #spraypal

A photo posted by Spray Pal (@spraypal) on Feb 6, 2015 at 11:18am PST

Our goal is not to sell product, although it's always great when someone makes the decision to switch on the spot and buys what they need to get started. In fact, we didn't even ship anything in for this show, we just brought what we could fit in our checked bag so we would have items to demo with. Our goal is to reach families who don't already know about cloth diapers and show them that it's easier than they think. Mission accomplished, I hope!

On the other hand, the disposable diaper brands along with big box stores are always at these events in full force. I hope that by having more of a presence at events like these, we can show families that they have options when it comes to diapering, and cloth diapers don't have to be intimidating!

If you have a big baby expo taking place locally that you feel could use a little more "fluff love" and cloth education, please let us know in the comments! We'd love to check it out and help #makeclothmainstream. :)