It all seems so obvious now.
Call the company PoshTots, sell high-end and over-the-top children's furnishings to rich and famous moms-to-be over the Internet, coddle the customers when they call and help them design imaginative nurseries, and watch the money roll in.
Of course, the story of Andrea Edmunds and her Henrico County-based PoshTots — which sells dream settings of happy children and loving parents — wasn't that simple.
Along the way, her story is marked by struggle, worry, work, doubt and pain.
* * * * *
In 1999, Edmunds was a Henrico probation officer.
The Richmond native had studied justice administration while working her way through Virginia Commonwealth University as a cocktail waitress.
After graduating in 1990, Edmunds worked in the Henrico Commonwealth's Attorney's Office in the victim-witness program and later supervised paroled felons.
Edmunds said she loved helping victims, particularly children, but "it killed me to go to court with a child whose mother's boyfriend sexually abused her."
"It was awful," she said. "I'll never forget the faces of those people."
Edmunds also remembers the face of the first felon she had to arrest on charges of violating probation: "He overdosed. Now he's dead."
As a probation officer, she appeared frequently in court before now-retired Henrico Circuit Judge George F. Tidey.
"She did a wonderful job for us," Tidey said, "but I did feel she had more talent than that."
In October 1999, a pregnant Edmunds met with IT consulting entrepreneur Karen Booth Adams, who had just had her second child, to talk about going to work for Adams as a recruiter.
The lunch stretched on for three hours, and PoshTots was born there, at the intersection of artistry, technology and babies.
Adams, who became PoshTots' angel investor and its CEO, "had an idea that she wanted to do something fun and creative with children," Edmunds said: "Launch a site and sell children's things."
To Edmunds, "It was a little scary."
In fact, "I really wanted more of a hobby business at that point," Adams said. "PoshTots was our hobby business run amok."
Edmunds said she learned to be a businesswoman from Adams, and she also learned to ignore data sometimes and listen to her gut.
Adams did not expect PoshTots to turn into the business that it did. "It was a wonderful surprise," she said.
Funded by Adams, the custom-built website cost a million dollars and took a year to build, launching in October 2000.
* * * * *
By 2006, PoshTots was generating about $10 million in sales.
The two founders sold their niche-of-a-niche business in a deal valued at the time at $14 million in cash, stock and a loan to a publicly traded company.
"I went from doing what I loved doing and was good at doing," Edmunds said, "to going to board meetings and pulling reports."
Edmunds remained with the company after the sale, and Adams left the business.
Meanwhile, the company that acquired PoshTots "saw dollar signs," she said, "but they really didn't understand what they were selling.
"We were all about bottom line," Edmunds said. "They were all about sales."
But the new owners were losing money hand over fist.
"It was my baby," Edmunds said. "It was horrible. It was a very difficult time."
PoshTots' eventual owner went into bankruptcy and onto the selling block.
Andrea and her husband, Andy, leveraged everything they owned to bid on PoshTots at the 2009 bankruptcy sale — only to be outbid by Drugstore.com Inc.
"They just assumed she'd come to work for them," Andy Edmunds said of the top bidder.
Instead, Andrea Edmunds doubled down and called their bluff.
"She took the key off her key ring and slid it across the table: 'You'll need this,' " her husband recalled her telling the corporate suits. "She had Clint Eastwood guts doing that."
Faced with losing PoshTots' most important asset — Andrea Edmunds — Drugstore.com rescinded its bid, and the Edmunds bought the company back for 6 cents on the dollar, paying $735,000.
* * * * *
Today, "our brand is the most expensive, extraordinary, over-the-top," Edmunds said unblushingly.
The company sells a Bonne Nuit Cradle in Versailles finish for $1,200, a $105 Classic White Moses Basket, a Posh Palette Decorative Spindle Convertible Crib for $1,079, or a Fantasy Coach children's bed redolent of the Cinderella fairy tale.
"That coach is what built our brand," Edmunds said.
The Fantasy Coach sells for $47,000. There are only two in the United States, she said.
PoshTots also markets art and décor, prams and highchairs, lighting, apparel, toys and playhouses. "We're not just selling the nursery," Edmunds said. "We're selling the room."
The company provides themed designs — princess and mermaids for girls, for instance, pirates and sports for boys — and designer rooms for babies and young children.
Having a baby, Edmunds said, "is the most important thing in a woman's life."
"Even when the economy's down … they're not going to skimp on the nursery," she said. "Almost all of our customers tell us once the nursery is done that that's their favorite place in the house to be."
Besides, Edmunds said, "People are still having babies."
* * * * *
Although the 18-employee company sells high-dollar merchandise, "when we started out, we didn't have a lot of money," she said. "We had to be creative how we got our name out there."
Stylish and telegenic herself, Edmunds had gotten acquainted with the national celebrity world when she worked part-time on local movie shoots as an assistant to producers.
"I don't mind picking up my phone and calling the 'Today' show," Edmunds said. "I could probably make friends with a tree."
The company doesn't use a public relations firm. Instead, media-savvy Edmunds talked PoshTots' products into appearances in film and television productions, national magazine features and well-publicized celebrity homes.
Her famous customers include Julia Roberts, Gwyneth Paltrow, Heidi Klum and Melania Trump.
"Lots of people, sports figures, celebrities, want an interior sanctuary for their children's play areas," Edmunds said of the attraction PoshTots' products have for her customers.
In the past year, the company has had 13,000 customers place orders worth more than $500, she said: "People want to have something from PoshTots."
The privately held company doesn't make its financial figures public. "We're between $5 million and $10 million" in annual sales, Edmunds said.
* * * * *
PoshTots started out representing unique, whimsical artisans who couldn't get their work before the public, she said.
One of those is urban-country furniture designer Nancy Gent of Nashville.
"They are a success story, and they made me a success story," Gent said. Since November, she has had 11 hefty orders through PoshTots.
"My first sale was $6,700," the former entertainment industry executive said. "Somebody purchased $6,700 worth of furniture over the Internet. That's remarkable."
Like many successful women in business, "The biggest problem is the working-mother guilt syndrome," Edmunds said. "I struggle with it."
She and her husband have three children. "On Wednesday, it takes three of us to drive them" to their activities," she said. "I've got to learn to turn off my cellphone."
At the same time, she said, "Running a business is full time. It's not 40 hours — it's nights and weekends, too.
"This is a family here," she said of her company. "I'm responsible for 18 people," who depend on her to keep their jobs viable.
"Those women up there are the face of PoshTots," Edmunds says of her design consultants who work on the loft level of the company's offices in eastern Henrico, about a half-mile east of the Rocketts Landing development.
Her employees can design a $30,000 room over the phone, soothe a jangled expectant mother's nerves, and laugh and cry with their clients' ups and downs.
"You have to look at what sells," Edmunds said, "but you can't lose track of your customers."
* * * * *
Money doesn't motivate her, she said. Her extravagance is a '66 Mustang convertible. "I'm not into fancy cars. I'm not into extravagant vacations," Edmunds said. "I'm much simpler. I'm a jeans and flip-flop girl."
What does get her pumped up, Edmunds said, is coming up with concepts, with ideas, starting things, creating things, collaborating and having fun with her business partner and lead designer Pam O'Hallaron,
And new opportunities keep popping up.
PoshTots has been picked up for a one-hour pilot show on the Home & Garden Television cable channel, and the company has just come out with its wholesale linen line.
"I've got my business back," Edmunds said, "and we're succeeding."
"I love the team I work with. I love the vendor interaction. I love the friends I've made," she said. "There's always a new challenge. I never get bored."
And, she said, "I love going to work every day."
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