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Smoochie Baby is turning 15! Yes, you heard that right! On Saturday, May 4th we are gearing up to celebrate 15 wonderful years at 110 Berry Street. Please stop by the store from 10am - 7pm for a sip and shop event with freebies from Molo, Bobo Choses, & OMY, a  raffle to win a $50 Smoochie Baby Gift Card, & 15% off storewide! Enjoy live music with Kyle Tigges, face-painting by Nicole, & a coloring station from 2pm - 4pm! This event is not to miss!

Celebrating Community 

In light of this amazing milestone at our boutique, we would like to thank the community that has made our existence possible… Williamsburg, Brooklyn has been our home for the last 15 years. As you all know, this neighborhood is filled with wonderful small businesses from doggy daycares, to kids clothing stores, bakeries, and everything in between. This reason in particular has made having a storefront in this area so special. Shopping locally is one of our core values here at Smoochie Baby and for our 15th birthday, we want nothing more than to share with you the benefits of supporting local as we reflect on 15 amazing years in Williamsburg.

Sustainability

Smoochie Baby has always had a mission of being as sustainable a business as possible. This is done in many ways such as encouraging the use of tote bags for shoppers instead of single-use bags and carrying brands that have a mutual understanding of sustainability (like Candy Lab, Flap Happy, and Pepita & Me). When shopping with local businesses like ours, you can feel better about your carbon footprint when making purchases. Fast fashion brands are some of the largest polluters on earth with the UNEP even stating that fast fashion brands make up 8% of global carbon emissions. Here at Smoochie Baby we aim to leave our planet better than we found it for our next generation. With a storefront outside of urban sprawl, we encourage walking from store to store in the neighborhood to lessen pollutants and explore other small businesses that can be found here!

Promoting the Economy

Small businesses are a great way to stimulate the economy! Independently run and owned small businesses, such as ours, make up an extremely important sector of the economy. Local businesses encourage entrepreneurship on a local level and also open up jobs within the community. According to the Small Business Administration, “The 2019 Small Businesses Profiles show that small businesses added 1.8 million net new jobs in the United States.” Wow, that is a lot of jobs and those numbers only represent one country! Imagine what could be done on a global scale if local businesses were supported as much as your local chain store.

Variety is the Spice of Life

Finally, local businesses add variety and diversity to a community! It would be boring to shop at the same few stores every week with the same products. At Smoochie Baby we aim to bring creative, fun, and unique products to the families in our area and beyond. Whether this is through supporting other small local brands (like PiccoliNY) or importing them from around the world (such as Tiny Tribe), we are on a mission to bring as much personality and character to your children’s lives and wardrobe as possible…

In conclusion, we would like to thank everyone in our community for making the last 15 years possible! We wouldn't have been able to make it without the support of our customers, vendors, and neighbors. We look forward to this next chapter at Smoochie Baby and cannot wait to see what the future holds. We hope to see you all at our anniversary event on May 4! Come sip and celebrate another year in Williamsburg with us!

"One of the most glorious messes in the world is the mess created in the living room on Christmas day. Don't clean it up too quickly."~ Andy Rooney

Running a local business is no small feat, especially in the age of the internet when we can order something and get it on our doorsteps almost instantaneously. Sometimes people seem to forget that small businesses form the core of our community. They provide spaces of camaraderie, familiarity, and warmth. So, in honor of Small Business Saturday we wanted to highlight some of our most cherished small businesses in Williamsburg. From markets, to doggy daycare, and hardware stores, Williamsburg is lucky to have a healthy and flourishing community of small businesses that really make the neighborhood what it is today. 

Aurora Hardware & Locksmith

In need of a spare key? Perhaps a lightbulb blew and you need to pick up a new one? Or maybe you are getting into gardening and want to get some nice pots and extra bags of soil? Aurora has you covered in all these areas and so much more! Having served the Brooklyn community for the last 30 years with their expertise, Aurora is really a one stop shop for all of your necessities for the home. This family run business is located right in the heart of Williamsburg, on Bedford Avenue. So make sure to go check them out next time you are in need of a screw or two!

Driggs Mercantile

Driggs Mercantile is a whimsical store where one can find artisan and locally made gifts and clothing. Their hand-curated selection of ephemera is hard to beat, featuring items like kids toys, textiles, tarot cards, jewelry, and stationery to name a few. Founded in 2017 by the same owners as Red Pearl on Bedford Avenue, this sister store has a completely different vibe. This boutique is an extremely calming space, with candles and crystals scattered throughout. It is the perfect spot to buy a birthday gift for a friend, or even goods to revamp your own home!

Le Doggie Cool

This doggy daycare center has it all! A place to board or leave your furry friend for a couple hours, you can trust that you are leaving your pet in great hands. It is clear that Le Doggie Cool’s entire staff loves and cares about animals, and treats them like they would their own family. Le Doggie Cool also provides grooming services and a coffee shop with treats for both you and your pup! On weekends it is open to the public, so you can go and play with the dogs on site, even if you don’t have one of your own. This small business truly is doggy heaven!

Williamsburg, and Brooklyn in general, is jam-packed with small businesses of all sorts! There are so many honorable mentions to name like Vittoria Mercato for their amazing sandwiches and goods for the kitchen and Northside Pharmacy which has been operating since 1910! So next time you need to shop for something, whether it be home goods or your prescription, consider visiting a local mom and pop instead of your big box stores. Small businesses really are the bread and butter of our community and all of our customers mean the world to us! So please go and check out your local businesses this Small Business Saturday! 

Check out the Smoochie Baby Holiday Gift Guide for the best gifts for all ages, interests, and budgets! 

Carefully curating a store can take a lot of time but it is one of our favorite parts of operating Smoochie Baby. We are quite fortunate here in New York City, to be surrounded by immensely talented makers, designers and creatives of all types. We love supporting local designers whenever possible and we wanted to share some of these wonderful New Yorkers with all of you. So we are thrilled to introduce our “Local Designer Spotlight Series”. Here we will chat with local brands that we love, many of whom we are honored to call friends.

In our first installment, we shine the spotlight on Estella Toys.  An award-winning brand of organic baby gifts and toys that began in the West Village in 2002. Estella has made their mark on the baby industry by staying true to their brand core which is exceptional quality items made by artisan workers. We sat down with Estalla founder, Jean Polsky, to discuss the inspiration behind the brand.

Would you tell us a little about yourself?

Hello Smoochie readers, it’s nice to meet you! My name is Jean and along with my husband, Chike, I own Estella, a luxury baby gift store that focuses on making organic and fair trade products. I was born and raised in NYC while Chike is from Nigeria. I like to think that our union is a little example of NYC’s beautiful melting pot!  Chike is trained as a lawyer, while I have been in retail since I graduated college (thanks for the suggestion, dad!). We live in NYC along with our three incredible kids.

What inspired you to start Estella?

Chike and I started Estella 18 years ago right before our first daughter, Stella, was born. At the time, luxury kids’ clothes in NYC were synonymous with starched collars and navy blue knickers. We had a different vision of how kids should dress, we wanted children's clothing that captured the imagination and joy that kids innately posess. So we set off to Europe to explore and quickly found that there was a whole new world of playful, fashionable kids’ clothing that the US was unaware of. We scooped up 20 new brands that we had never heard of and set up shop in Greenwich Village. Our customers loved the freshness of what we brought, a different vision for what luxury kids’ clothes could be. I still remember receiving boxes of clothes from Europe and customers gathering around in the shop while we unpacked the boxes, gasping with excitement as we pulled out new styles. It was exhilarating to have them share in our enthusiasm for these magnificent creations! Fast-forward to 2020, and we are now an online shop, making our own creations, with amazing shops (like Smoochie Baby) carrying our brand all over the country! 

What has surprised you the most or been the most challenging since starting Estella? 

One thing I did not contemplate when we started our little business was that we would have the honor of being a part of the most memorable time in parents’ lives. We had the privilege of meeting women who were newly pregnant (we would often know before their friends and family!) and then being a part of their lives for years as their children grew up. We would trade parenting tips and follow the highs and lows of life with them. We got to really know these wonderful people as well as their kids who we had “known” in utero. My kids now go to school with their kids and to this day, one of my closest friends is a customer I met in our shop who was pregnant at the same time I was. The incredible relationships, that would be the surprise icing on the cake!

Do you have a product that is a best seller? 

That’s a tough one! Because our products are handmade, we are still trying to keep up with demand on so many of our things. We are best-known for our organic taxi rattle, but for some reason, there’s been a run on hot sauce rattles these days! 

What advice do you have for someone looking to start their own business?

Starting your own business is a privilege: you're the boss, it’s your vision, your hours, your success. But on the flip side, you’re the boss: it’s your vision, your hours, your success!