Going Green for Babies

Photo: Bohemian Baby

Welcome to the new small-business series Trading Places, which will take a look at entrepreneurs who have successfully transitioned from working at a traditional 9-to-5 job to being self-employed. If you have such a story you'd like to share, please email me.

When 36-year-old Anni Daulter gave birth to her first child in 1997, she decided to introduce little Zoe to nutritious, fresh food. There was little such baby food on the market, so Daulter concocted recipes and cooked gourmet baby meals for her son herself.

She would go to her local farmers' market in West Hollywood, Calif., buy a range of fresh produce and then spend a couple of hours each day cutting, steaming and blending fruits and veggies to come up with different combinations of purees. And as her son got older, Daulter mixed in grains she had ground and boiled.

Although Daulter thought of starting her own wholesome baby-food company at the time, she was not in an emotional or financial position to do so then. Seven years later, however, when her daughter Lotus was born, Daulter and her husband, Tim, decided that the time to jump-start a baby-food company was right.

Previous job: Social worker and part-time college professor.

Now: Founder and owner of Bohemian Baby.

The transition: "It wasn't really that hard. Emotionally, I was ready to do something different, and also, I saw opening up Bohemian Baby as an extension of the work I was doing as a social worker ... another extension of social consciousness to make a positive impact on kids' nutrition. There was a learning curve, but that was really exciting. I don't get weirded out by change -- I see it as a really fun, exciting part of life," Daulter says.

Start-up costs: Right at the beginning, the Daulters invested about $25,000 into their business. "Financially it was a little bit of a struggle," Daulter recalls. "We did a lot of borrowing, got friends and family to work for free and did trading services, where we gave a little bit of the company in exchange for work on the Web site." Now, two years into the business, they have about $1 million invested in Bohemian Baby.