Carlo Navarro and his wife Leasa were shopping for their soon-to-be-born second child when they noticed an employee tacking up posters on the wall of the store. Upon closer inspection, they realized the posters comprised a massive wall of recalls. And Carlo saw something that looked familiar.
"One of the recalls looked like one of the products we had at home," he said.
He took a photo of the product, a clip on a high chair, and the couple attempted to figure out if it had been recalled, but kept running into trouble: they no longer had the receipt or registration card, and combing through the huge database of recalled products was tedious. "It just took forever," he said. "There has to be a better way to know what you own and get alerted if it's recalled."
So the Navarros decided to create that better way to check for recalls. In April they're launching Nestled, a piece of technology that alerts parents if there is an issue with baby products they've bought. Their tech will scan user inboxes to find e-receipts and shipping confirmation for products, then check the manufacturer database to see if a product has been recalled. If so, they alert parents and direct them to where they can find more information about replacing the product.
Thankfully the Navarros' high chair ended up not being recalled, but most families don't have the time to investigate or aren't made aware of recalls announcements.
That's because the current process for alerting families (issuing a press release, relying on word of mouth and social media) has proven ineffective: in 2014 over 16 million units of children’s products were recalled, but less than 4 percent of recalls owned by consumers were fixed or destroyed.
"If you were to spend five minutes reading about some of the things that happened, unfortunately, with families losing their kids..." he paused. "That is unimaginable for us."
Though there are other apps and platforms that allow parents to input the products they own, the platforms requires significant manual input and keeping track of registration numbers. The Consumer Product Safety Commission has product recall alerts, but they're broad and category based.
With Nestled, the Navarros are hoping to fix both these problems through automatically scanning email receipts and shipping notices (which house the registration numbers needed), then matching it to the database (which has an open API). They're also planning on adding the ability to manually input products. Initially they're covering the infant/child categories, and are working on finding recalls on food and drugs, such as child medicine.
"We're just playing matchmaker: we're going to see that if the things you have purchased have potentially been recalled from the database. And if there is an issue, we'll alert you via email," said Carlo.
Currently they aim to launch a beta the second week of April. Aside from Carlo and Leasa, they have also brought on a technical cofounder who is helping develop the project. They're bootstrapping the company, and plan to make revenue through premium features, such content and workshops around parenting. They also aim to expand to cover products that have been bought secondhand or handed down.
Previously the Navarros founded KickSprout, an educational platform for expecting and new parents, and plan on using their partnerships and connections with professionals in the parenting space to reach future customers. Carlo also previously worked as the community and marketing manager at Startup Institute.
They're also taking an open approach to the startup process: Carlo said they'll be documenting their parenting and entrepreneurial journey on Instagram and Snapchat (@teamnestled) to show "the struggles and celebration of raising a family in the city, as well as [building] a business."
Image credit: Pixabay CC0
