Although Sophie le Giraffe was “born” in France in 1961, the popular baby teether giraffe didn’t get introduced into the United States until nearly forty years later. In 2000, Helene Dumoulin-Montgomery began to import Sophie into the United States.
At that time, Dumoulin-Montgomery was a new mother in Orange County, California, and had relocated from France, where she grew up with a Sophie teether of her own. To sell the French Teething Giraffe, Dumoulin-Montgomery drove from California boutique to boutique, only to be rejected because of what was considered to be an excessively high price for a rubber, baby teething toy. However, she persisted in her work to sell Sophie the Giraffe, insisting, “I had to have a lot of faith in that giraffe.”
Perhaps one of the first business owners to realize Sophie the Giraffe’s United States potential popularity was Teri Weiss, who was the owner of a Beverly HIlls boutique called Elegant Child. In Weiss’s boutique, she sold high-end clothing, including $500 dresses for infants. So she was not at all concerned about the relatively high cost of Sophie the Giraffe.
Weiss stated, “I knew I could sell it.” So she bought several Sophie Giraffe teethers to put into the expensive baby baskets that she assembled and sold to celebrity parents. Soon, her weekly sales of Sophies were in the hundreds, as the toy was immediately popular. And each time, of course, a celebrity’s child was photographed chewing on or playing with a Sophie Giraffe, Weiss saw a spike in sales. Eventually, Weiss was selling 125 Sophies a day.
In 2007, sales of the Sophie Teething Giraffe increased substatially, when hundreds of toys made in China were recalled because of having been made with lead-based paint. Sophie Giraffe had already been on the market, especially in Southern California, and “Mommie Bloggers” reported over and again that Sophie was a charming and helpful baby teething toy that was safe for their babies.
Dumoulin-Montgomery accomplished her initial Sophie Giraffe sales momentum from celebrity endorsements and publicity. After that, she credits “Mommy bloggers” for her sustained sales success. She sent sample Sophie Giraffe baby teethers to mommy bloggers who wrote on parenting blogs and message boards. They consistently wrote about how impressed they were, even amazed, about the teething giraffe. This, of course, resulted in other parents purchasing Sophie the Giraffe, especially new parents who need to buy a lot of unfamiliar products relatively quickly. When a baby won’t stop screaming from the pain and discomfort of teething, a blog post crediting a rubber giraffe teether with deliverance from “the firey pits ot teething Hell” was surely an influential sales pitch.
After her slow and difficult beginning, Dumoulin-Montgomery ultimately generated many, many sales of Sophie le Teething Giraffe. As an emphatic “Thank You” for initiating her massive wave of Sophie Giraffe sales in the United States, Vulli recognized and celebrated her efforts by presenting Dumoulin-Montgomery with a gold-painted giraffe.
