Families: Mothers of Invention

"All my friends loved it," says Lowey Luttway, 37, who left her TV job when her boy was born 2 1/2 years ago. "But store owners were on the fence. It didn't blow them away." Eventually, she convinced Babies "R" Us to order the smock, and she has since recouped her initial $25,000 investment. But it's her second invention, the StrollerStand, a kickstand for strollers, that Lowey Luttway, now the mother of two, thinks will be a big success. "If you've ever pushed an umbrella stroller packed with shopping bags, you know the minute you take your kid out, it tips over," she says, speaking from experience.

Armed with a prototype and a patent pending, Lowey Luttway talked to smaller independent stores and bigger chain stores to see if they were interested. This time, she says, "the response has been tremendous." She already has orders from a host of smaller stores and a tentative agreement with Babies "R" Us to sell the StrollerStand, which she expects to gross $500,000 a year. She has also launched a website, ParentWise.com where she encourages other moms to send in their own ideas, in return for which she promises to pay them a licensing fee. What she has found, however, is that many of her site's visitors (30,000 hits since July) are looking for advice on how to become entrepreneurs themselves. "It just shows what a desire there is out there to start up your own business and make money," she observes. Her advice to other would-be mompreneurs: "Look for a product that serves a function that is truly unique, something that is a must-have instead of a nice-to-have." And when gauging whether the product is marketable, she says, "don't just ask your friends."

That approach certainly helped Antonetti. Before launching SoapWorks, Antonetti put an advertisement in her local penny paper that read, "Calling All Moms: Mom looking to start a company, and I need your help. If you could create your perfect cleaning solution and body-care products, what would it look like? Providing free lunch, guaranteed entertainment. Bring your kids."

More than 220 mothers turned out. Antonetti had prepared lunch for 30. "The response I got from other mothers was amazing," she says. It was in response to the meeting that Antonetti convinced her lawyer husband Dennis Karp that they should sell their four-bedroom house and her Mercedes and move to a smaller house down the hill so that they would have enough money to start a manufacturing business. "The hardest thing for most moms is the fear factor of starting their own business," she says. "Once they get over that, it's easy." Above all, advises Antonetti, "trust your own instincts." After all, they're likely to be the instincts of a mother.