Citi Collective

I started Citi Collective with the intention of helping women feel confident, prepared and beautiful through thoughtfully-designed diaper bags.

After having my first son, I felt frustrated I couldn’t find a diaper bag that incorporated my pre-mom style with mom-friendly functionality. I wanted to help other parents facing the same challenge so I spent close to a year designing the perfect diaper bag.

After multiple prototypes, sleepless nights and countless samples, the Citi Traveler and Citi Explorer were released. With the addition of our second son and our growing following, we've continued to update our designs and release new ones over the past 3 years.

I'm also proud to work alongside a small team of entrepreneurial Mothers who each support our business in a different way. I contract out all of our operations due to my lack of time to manage employees. I love that my passion is helping grow their businesses too.

I want to be very transparent about why I'm selling because it has nothing to do with Citi Collective as a business. As we all felt, 2020 was a year of change. I was so proud that Citi Collective withstood the challenges of 2020 and many good things came from the year of change for the business.

I've always had a full time corporate career while I grew Citi Collective. When Covid hit, I went from traveling for work frequently to being home all of the time. As part of this new life, I realized how much time was spent away from my two boys because it was all spent balancing Citi Collective and my corporate career. I was spread too thin and not giving either Citi Collective or my family the attention they deserved to thrive.

I recently just got another promotion with even greater visibility. I was only working on Citi Collective part time before but this leaves me with even less time to focus on the brand. I truly love my corporate position.

Citi Collective has great potential and could be a lucrative business if it was given more attention. The foundational assets and processes are built, meaning you could walk into the business and immediately focus on marketing and sales.

I've deeply enjoyed the process of building this business but feel I'm no longer the right person to grow it to it's full potential.

Due to my limited time to manage day to day activities, there is a team already set up to handle: customer service, order processing, influencer collaborations, social media, and google ads, content creation/photography, and graphic design. They are all contracted and not Citi Collective employees.

My limited time is spent defining marketing messaging, establishing and maintaining retailer relationships, defining brand identity and strategies around that identity, and executing on the marketing strategies.

Citi Collective was built over 3 years with only 2-3 hours a day, 4 days a week. In that time, a solid foundation of resources and assets were built and profitability achieved this past year.

As the sole owner with a full-time corporate career, I built a network of professionals and resources that help keep Citi Collective running with minimal involvement from me but with a recent corporate promotion, I now have even less time to dedicate to Citi Collective. It's time the brand had someone dedicated to it full time to take it to the next level.

There are 2 immediate areas where margins can be improved: shipping, fulfillment and buying power. We currently work with a small shipping company that does not have the favorable rates of a larger 3PL. By transitioning inventory into a larger warehouse, shipping and fulfillment rates would drop significantly.

We currently purchase small amounts of inventory for strategic purposes, which raises the product cost; however, the product cost drops significantly with greater volume purchases.

The final potential growth opportunity is with a concerted marketing strategy and focus on branding, messaging and execution. We've been successful even with the limited time spent on marketing strategies; therefore, with more time dedicated to this the business is destined to grow rapidly.

Citi Collective is a turn-key opportunity since all processes are currently being managed by outside resources other than the current owner. These processes include, but are not limited to: working with a trusted manufacturer, email flows, graphic design, photography, social media management, shipping and packaging, and customer service.

The new owner simply needs basic knowledge on managing third-parties and online software; however, the business could be more successful with resources dedicated to marketing - brand messaging, social media ad content creation and execution, and effective email flows.