{"id":4080,"date":"2009-06-01T08:32:45","date_gmt":"2009-06-01T12:32:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/offmetro.com\/ny\/?p=4080"},"modified":"2025-08-21T09:24:58","modified_gmt":"2025-08-21T13:24:58","slug":"bump-maternity-clothing-brooklyn","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/offmetro.com\/ny\/4080\/bump-maternity-clothing-brooklyn\/","title":{"rendered":"A Walk Down Brookyn’s Bergen Street: Fourth Stop, The Maternity Boutique"},"content":{"rendered":"

This is the fourth of five interviews<\/a> with small business owners at their boutique shops on Bergen Street, Brooklyn. <\/em><\/p>\n

S<\/strong>hop:<\/strong> Bump<\/p>\n

Wares:<\/strong> <\/em>Contemporary designer maternity clothes for the pregnant urban shopper<\/p>\n

Location:<\/strong> 464 Bergen Street<\/p>\n

SaSaDi Odunsi and Hannah Macdonald, <\/strong>how long has Bump been in business?<\/strong> Two years this June.<\/p>\n

What were you doing beforehand?<\/strong> I worked in wholesale jewelry, and then I took a break to be a mom, and then ultimately met my business partner [Hannah Macdonald] at Mommy Baby Yoga in Park Slope. The two of us decided that this area needed a maternity store and Bump was born.<\/p>\n

What do you think was the biggest challenge opening the store?<\/strong> Well for one, getting this together as new mothers became a family endeavor. Trying to figure out the best neighborhood to open the store in for another. And we were ultimately the first store to open up on this block. We took a leap of faith.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Has the bad economy had an effect on the business, or your plans for the business?<\/strong> It definitely affected us, but thankfully we\u2019re a niche, and sort of a destination store. So because of that we\u2014knock on wood\u2014have been able to carry on and hold through. We haven\u2019t seen a huge amount of growth, but our numbers are staying where they should be. We definitely want to expand but we\u2019re not jumping to do any expansion.<\/p>\n

Park Slope seems like the perfect neighborhood for that niche you spoke of. Was that a major consideration?<\/strong> It was. My business partner lived in Clinton Hill, but there\u2019s a joke: Don\u2019t drink the water when you move to Park Slope because you\u2019ll get pregnant. There are a lot of young families in this neighborhood. We also like the fact that Bergen Street is not just Park Slope. We\u2019re sort of on the edge of Park Slope, but we\u2019re close to Prospect Heights and we have a lot of customers coming in from all over Brooklyn as well as Manhattan. We were two young moms in a circle of young moms, none of whom had really shopped for maternity clothes in Brooklyn. All of us went to Manhattan to do it, and we wanted to bring it back to Park Slope and have people be shopping in this neighborhood. Also, there are a lot of second time moms that don\u2019t go into the city as often but want to be able to shop.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s a bit of a reputation for Park Slope parents and mothers.<\/strong> There definitely is.<\/p>\n

\"bump

It\u2019s a very lively store, which I guess is appropriate.<\/strong> Yeah, exactly. And we still really want it to be a boutique environment for the first time mom to be able to come in and feel like she\u2019s not bombarded by baby stuff yet, since that\u2019s all to come. At the same time we have a really welcoming and comfortable shop for a second time mom, or a new mom to come in with her baby and not feel out of place.<\/p>\n

Do certain fabrics work better?<\/strong> Stretch! Anything with stretch usually will work. We also carry some organic fabrics. People like wearing bamboo, or some organic cotton just because it\u2019s a nice fabric, it\u2019s soft, and better for your body. But generally things that have stretch, or lightweight fabrics, are very good. And dresses. Dresses were definitely a favorite of mine through my pregnancy, and to most customers. It\u2019s comfortable, it\u2019s easy, and you can look great.<\/p>\n

Have you been able to do promotions around the neighborhood?<\/strong> One of the key things that Hannah and I wanted to do when we were planning the store was to do as much as we could for the community around us. So we do monthly mocktail evenings. We have done events with doulas, with pediatricians, with lactation consultants, with some of our skin care lines. We do evening events where we invite someone to talk about the services that they offer and do Q&A with our customers. It\u2019s great because it\u2019s an intimate setting, but it\u2019s also our way of creating a community environment within the store, as well as, hopefully, benefiting other businesses.<\/p>\n

Do mom\u2019s follow-up after giving birth? Do you ever get baby pictures?<\/strong> We get a lot of moms coming back in with their babies and talking about how they love shopping in the store, or coming back and looking for interesting stuff. We get a lot of repeat customers coming in to show us their babies. We\u2019re even on Facebook now!<\/p>\n

And it\u2019s pretty great that an adult shop is right next door.<\/strong> Yes, indeed. Actually, for about a month it was Babeland, then us, and then a Gymboree store.<\/p>\n

Wow, like a Kinsey sex chart.<\/strong> It was like the perfect progression.<\/p>\n

Have you ever considered 9 month coupons?<\/strong> (laughing)<\/em> That or we\u2019re going to sabotage Babeland\u2019s stock of condoms. Actually, we really want to team up with them because we know Claire the owner. We actually met her in Mommy-Baby Yoga as well. We talked to her when she was looking for areas and this was sort of a good neutral spot for her to open. They do a great Sexy Momma series.<\/p>\n

I think if you\u2019re going to have a sex shop next to a maternity shop that\u2019s the best one that I would choose to have next to us. But it is really funny sitting here and watching people walk by laughing at both the two stores. And some people do think it\u2019s a baby store next door, which might be a little more appropriate next to a maternity shop, but it\u2019s great. It sparks a conversation. It\u2019s not your common line of shops, but that\u2019s what it\u2019s all about.<\/p>\n

How to get there:<\/strong> Use the Hopstop Link below for specific directions. (Bump, 464 Bergen Street, btwn. 5th Ave. and Flatbush Ave., 718.638.1960, bumpbrooklyn.com<\/a>)<\/em><\/p>\n

\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This is the fourth of five interviews with small business owners at their boutique shops on Bergen Street, Brooklyn. Shop: Bump Wares: Contemporary designer maternity clothes for the pregnant urban shopper Location: 464 Bergen Street SaSaDi Odunsi and Hannah Macdonald, how long has Bump been in business? Two years this June. What were you doing […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":14,"featured_media":15230,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[854,320,315,266,849,752],"tags":[15,102,343,341,84],"class_list":{"0":"post-4080","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-boutiques-shopping-2","8":"category-brooklyn-outer-boroughs-destination","9":"category-day-trips","10":"category-interviews","11":"category-shopping-2","12":"category-subway-2","13":"tag-brooklyn","14":"tag-family","15":"tag-maternity","16":"tag-recession-interview","17":"tag-shopping"},"acf":[],"mv":{"thumbnail_id":15230,"thumbnail_uri":"https:\/\/offmetro.com\/ny\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/06\/bump-front-300x242.png"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/offmetro.com\/ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4080","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/offmetro.com\/ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/offmetro.com\/ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/offmetro.com\/ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/14"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/offmetro.com\/ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4080"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/offmetro.com\/ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4080\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/offmetro.com\/ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/15230"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/offmetro.com\/ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4080"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/offmetro.com\/ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4080"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/offmetro.com\/ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4080"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}