Baby's & Kid's 1st Furniture is an independent family owned retailer located in Houston, Texas. They carry a huge variety of baby gear, bedding, furniture, apparel, accessories, strollers, and car seats. Thoughtful, well-trained, and experienced employees listen to parents to discover what they need for their new family. From shower registry to parent classes such as Baby101, infant CPR, and car seat safety and installation taught by certified technicians, Baby's & Kid's 1st Furniture has it all. Huge selection, Dad friendly, and Mom approved. Visit www.babys1st.com. Episode #828 is sponsored by BabyBjorn. Please visit DadLabs.com and join the conversations in the community forums.

Brad:  Come right back and we'll show you around one of our favorite independent baby and kid stores in the world. [music]
Clay:  The DadLabs crew has travelled here to Houston, Texas at the "Baby's and Kid's 1st Furniture." We love being here because this is an independent retailer. The Big Box has got their place, but we love these family owned stores and this is, maybe, the best example we've ever seen.
Brad:  Absolutely, I'm blown away because they've got cute and functional and everything in between.
Clay:  Let's talk to some of the folks that work here at "Baby's & Kid's 1st Furniture" and find out what it is that makes this place so special.
Yvette Muller:  We have great products, but great products just sit there if there's not someone to explain and educate and cultivate the customer. We are so picky about our employees. We would rather open and close ourselves for a month rather than hire the one person.
Anne Muller:  Well, at Baby's 1st, we just want to educate the customer. We want to make each individual experience their own experience. Because even though we see a ton of pregnant women every day, we know that each individual person is most of the time dealing with her first pregnancy. We want to make them feel special as an individual and we want to educate them on what they need to know.
Jacob Muller:  We're all parents, we're all family. The majority of the people here are parents. We always have a big philosophy on, "If we wouldn't get it for our own kids, we're not going to sell it in our stores."
Anne:  We carefully select what we're going to put on our floors, from car seats to furniture to bedding, blankets, anything that we put on our floor. We don't offer a million options of one item. We give you what we feel is the best option for you and narrow it down and what's going to work best for you as a mother.
Yvette:  So many of our products have been chosen because of customer input. If they come and we hear people ask for a product more often, then we're going to start investigating, rather than just go to the one big baby show. We also go to gift markets because a lot of the products that you're seeing in here, we just, we'll find one little gem at one place and think, "Oh my God, that would be great if taken a picture with a baby girl" or "Little boys would love this product." We've gotten pretty good at it. We try having a variety of different things for people to choose from especially for shower registry.
Jacob:  Primarily, I buy the gear, the car seats, the strollers, the baby gear, the carriers, that sort of thing. That was a category that was added when I came over here about five years ago. It's been an increasingly important part of our business. I think, people really like to see a guy out here, gives them a different point of view on all this stuff, a lot of times. The dads love shopping especially the gear and the strollers, car seats and then working with a guy feel real comfortable just with that extra point of view.
Anne:  It's great to see the interest that the dads have at Baby's 1st. Because you think that dads aren't going to really care what goes on. But, really there's a huge interest in fathers. We've built some great relationships with dads and it's great to have their input. Because sometimes the wives are like, "I really wish he wasn't participating in this." But, in the end it's great because when she's making so many big decisions and he's participating along the way, it's just a great experience for them both.
Yvette:  We also have so many programs and we really believe in educating the customer. We offer classes, "Baby 101," we have infant CPR, we have two certified car seats. A technician and an instructor that work here that teach car seat safety and installation. We're just always thinking and we're always listening to our customers.
Jacob:  I'm on the floor all the time and just talking to customers, working with customers, seeing what they see and seeing what they want, what they need and we bring it in and we try and do our best to give it to them, hopefully, before they're even asking for it.
Anne:  We want them to walk out knowing exactly what they need and feeling comfortable in their situation and wanting to share with their friends and other families exactly their experience at Baby's 1st.
Yvette:  We love our customers. They come back to show us their babies. One of them stopped in the other day because they wanted to see the sales person before they move to Austin. They had wanted to come and say, "Goodbye" with their children. We're very interactive with them.
Brad:  Gear, bedding, furniture, accessories, apparel and tons of BabyBjorn products.
Clay:  Yeah, we found that selection was fantastic. But, what makes this special are the people that we've heard from. So thoughtful, well trained experienced, they do a great job of listening to parents and finding out what they need and guiding them to the products that's going to fit them and their babies.
Brad:  Because that's the important thing.
Clay:  It is the important thing. Listening is what makes for a great store. That's what they've got here. We want to thank the folks here at Baby's and Kid's 1st Furniture for hosting us and we want to thank BabyBjorn for sponsoring today's program.
Brad:  They really have got a fantastic selection of BabyBjorn products here at "Baby's and Kids 1st Furniture." Lots of independent retailers have them, so look for one near you.
Clay:  That's all from us here at DadLabs. We'll see you next time.