Minnesota-Based Web Site Features Toys for Disabled Children

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GBKids.com

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While KBkids is among dozens of high-profile dot.coms that have hired advertising agencies for unprecedented publicity blitzes this year, GBkids makes do with in-house talent and a relatively meager operating budget in the tens of thousands.

And while the likes of KBkids and Toys R Us sells scads of brand-name toys in a mostly mainstream market, GBkids primarily focuses on a narrow niche: products for children with disabilities.

With site hits in the tens of thousands but few sales to date, GBkids has hazy prospects at best. But its two founders, Jim Bergquist and Ron Goldstein, have a powerful motivator in Devra Goldstein, 10, who is disabled and uses many of the products sold on the site.

The girl can't speak or operate everyday devices as other children do, but a variety of ``switches'' -- essentially, large and easy-to-press buttons -- give her the ability to say ``yes'' or ``no,'' to activate a boom box or a popcorn popper, and even to read Living Books on a PC or deliver prerecorded book reports in her fourth-grade classroom.

Her dad is devoted to publicizing the switches, manufactured by Minneapolis-based AbleNet, which has primarily marketed its products to educators and not average consumers. GBkids aims to change that.

``As a parent of a (child) with disabilities, I felt this was a niche that had not been pursued,'' Goldstein says. That's a shame because switches and other products have made ``a great difference (in Devra's life) ... I want my child to fit in with her peers,'' and she has.

Though GBkids is an underdog in the dot.com game, the Internet may nevertheless represent the key to its survival, one market expert speculates.

``Were it not for the Internet, (Gbkids) would suffer from isolation and limited customer demand'' despite a clear need for its products, says John C. Harris, CEO of the Cincinnati-based ViewSource Media marketing firm, who is himself disabled. ``It would have a difficult time surviving with the large mass-market stores. This way, GBkids.com can reach out globally and reach a significant and growing niche market.''

Other disabled-child products on GBkids (www.gbkids.com) include extra-sturdy all-terrain strollers from Baby Jogger that, unlike the company's infant strollers, are designed for children weighing up to 150 pounds. GBkids makes a point to hawk products such as the Joggers that are playful and colorful, not those that are clinical-looking, ``cumbersome and call attention to the disabled child,'' Goldstein says. GBkids also has products with general appeal, including Magnetic Poetry letter-magnet kits, Bumpa Bed child mattresses (from the Baby Jogger people) and even Pokemon video-game products.

The latter are technically sold on the FuncoLand site, but GBkids serves as a Funco ``affiliate'' by linking to the electronic-game vendor and pocketing an undisclosed percentage of every resulting sale. The FuncoLand/GBkids collaboration emerged because both firms use the same e-commerce-hosting service, Minneapolis-based Mindframe, according to Goldstein.

What parents won't find on GBkids are pictures of Devra Goldstein. Her father may have blown a major marketing opportunity by declining to use her as a human-interest case study, beyond one brief paragraph, but he says he is more concerned about guarding her privacy. He doesn't want her to become the site's ``patron saint.''

Bergquist and Goldstein do seek to become resources for parents, siblings or friends of disabled children, even if GBkids doesn't necessarily sell them anything. Once, a schoolgirl sent Goldstein a plaintive e-mail: ``I have been looking for a mouse that a child with CP (cerebral palsy) can use with greater ease than a regular mouse. I've seen what I was looking for, but it only works with a PC. At my school, we work on Macs, which presents a problem. Does such an item exist? ... You'll make a little girl very happy!!''

Goldstein says he had already done enough research to recommend three products. ``That might not be a sale, but (we) provided advice, information and help.''

When asked about GBkids' long-term prospects, Bergquist and Goldstein say their brainchild is in a ``slow, steady growth'' phase, with zero pressure from outside investors -- the two launched the site in late November entirely with their own money -- and only one color ad in a parenting publication. Their informal sales projections are modest by KBkids standards -- about $10,000 to $20,000 within six months, which won't be critical to the pair's personal survival because both hold full-time jobs.

They have kept their start-up costs unusually low because they require little outside help. Bergquist who owns a graphic-design company, has the skills to work on the site's eye-catching design himself. Goldstein, an independent printing broker, handles all of GBkids' negotiations with product vendors and potential partners.

The entrepreneurs will know their efforts are paying off if they start moving three-wheeled Joggers as spring approaches, and if their switch sales take off shortly before the next school season. Christmas 2000 toy sales will, they hope, help assure their site's survival.

As for the GBkids moniker, they say no similarity to KBkids should be inferred. They originally toyed with names such as BabyLove before deciding on GB -- short for Goldstein and Bergquist.

Dec. 22, 1999