The business launched Jan. 30 featuring brands such as Motherhood, PinkBlush, Isabel Maternity, GAP, H&M, Shein, ASOS and more.
Customers using the clothing rental service select a box from their website and choose items to put in it.. Then they wear the clothes for the rental period, wash them, and return them in the same box. Shipping is free.
Customers also can rent a dress in the Special Occasion box for two weeks for a baby shower, maternity photos or another event.
The demand for maternity apparel grew at a Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) of 3.5% between 2016 and 2020, and was set to total $21.6 billion in 2021, according to a recent survey. The demand for maternity apparel is projected to expand at 6.7% CAGR during the forecast period 2021 through 2031.
Salgado said Bump in Bloom was conceived when her friend, Sabrina Tanner, was pregnant with her second child.
“She knew this was her last baby and was venting to me about how frustrating it was to buy expensive maternity clothes, knowing that this was her last child and that reselling clothes was a hassle,” she said. “She said ‘I wish there was a service that let women rent maternity clothes.’ She and I started talking about the reality of this idea and how it should work.”
Salgado said when she was pregnant, she didn’t want to buy maternity clothes because she thought it was “a waste of money” to only wear them for a few months and she wanted to save space in her closet.
“I ended up stretching out many of my non-maternity clothes, which meant I had to get a whole new wardrobe after shrinking down to pre-pregnancy size,” she said. “Sabrina and I became business partners a week later for Bump in Bloom LLC. We want to help women through their pregnancies.”
The business is operated out of Salgado’s home in Colorado and Tanner’s home in Virginia.
Salgado said Bump in Bloom’s inventory is eco-friendly and sustainable and comes from previously-pregnant individuals as donations. It also purchases clothing second-hand from individuals nationwide.
The company has high standards for cleanliness, and each garment is thoroughly inspected between each rental, Salgado said. Not all donated clothing enters Bump in Bloom’s inventory, she said.
“When a woman agrees to rent with us, she also agrees to wash the garments before returning them,” Salgado said. “We inspect them upon delivery and then wash them a second time to ensure we are not spreading COVID-19 before it enters our inventory again.”
Molly Omohundro, a mother to an 18-month-old, is eight months pregnant with her second child. She called Bump in Bloom “a brilliant idea.”
“Maternity clothes are so expensive to buy and for this second pregnancy I would’ve had to buy a whole new season of them, so when I found Bump in Bloom, it was a life-saver,” said Omohundro, of Berea, Kentucky. “Renting from them gave me the ability to try out styles of clothing I normally wouldn’t have purchased on my own and gave me the ability to look extra stylish this pregnancy.”
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