Baby Steps to Success

Though they have been in business only three years, Deaver Brown and Alexandre Goodwin, both 29, have grossed $6,100,000 so far in 1973, mostly from sales of their Umbroller. It is a clever little baby stroller that folds to resemble an umbrella on wheels. Already some 750,000 have been sold, and business is good enough that last week the entrepreneurs reduced the price from $25 to $20.

In 1970 Brown was a $25,000-a-year product manager with General Foods and Goodwin was a $14,000-a-year Justice Department antitrust lawyer; but neither of the two former prep school chums (Choate) was having much fun. They examined some 20 industries for prospects and chose juvenile equipment because of its lack of innovation. Then they persuaded an engineer friend, Jim Sloan, to design a product, and the Umbroller rolled out. Brown and Goodwin raised $120,000 from their bank accounts and relatives, quit their jobs and founded Cross River Products Inc., with headquarters in their living rooms.

Today the company has offices in Croton-on-Hudson, N.Y., plants in the U.S. and Canada and 350 employees. It also has two other profitable lines: the $12 to $20 Backpack baby carrier and the $40 Playcrib combination crib and table that folds up like a suitcase. Last week the company expanded with the introduction of a larger folding stroller and the acquisition of the juvenile lamp division of Universal Lamp Co.

Goodwin and Brown expect that Cross River, 90% owned by them, will earn $300,000 this fiscal year. They have not allowed its success to change their thinking about babies. They remain outspoken proponents of reducing the birth rate. Their reasoning: by having fewer children and bearing them later in life, parents will have more money to spend on each child.

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