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This post may contain affiliate links which help support our blog efforts. This interview with Project Nursery is a special one. Project Nursery was the main source of inspiration when I designed my very first nursery, for my own son. This was before offering e-design services to other families through YouthfulNest. Today we chat all things design trends, products and e-design services all offered on the Project Nursery + Project Junior website! Co-founders Pam Ginocchio and Melisa Fluhr have listened to the interests of their followers and now their offering goes above and beyond visual inspiration. Now those amazing products seen in the dreamy room images are for sale right from their site's shop! You can also get started right from their site on your universal baby registry in partnership with MyRegistry.com. Last, but not least, they offer e-design services in partnership with non other than two top nursery design services from YouthfulNest and Little Crown Interiors. Read on to learn more about how they are bringing it all to you and what's next on their mission to help families nail their youthful room dreams and help moms find stress-free lifestyle solutions.  Lisa Janvrin's first nursery design for her son and teen step-son inspired by Project Nursery content. Q&A with Project Nursery One stop for all things inspiration, design & Shop  Co-founders Pam Ginocchio and Melisa Fluhr Q. What was happening in your lives or what were you doing two when you decided to team up and start Project Nursery? A. We love the story of how Project Nursery got started. It was a regular day in February when Melisa decided to upload her son’s nursery onto a popular home improvement website. Overnight, it had become the #1 viewed nursery online. The amount of comments and emails she received was crazy, and we knew we were onto something.  Melisa Fluhr's son's gorgeous nursery that started it all. We both shared a passion for design, and we had been planning nurseries for our first babies at the same time. During that process, we were totally baffled by the lack of online resources for designing children’s spaces. This was back in 2008, long before Pinterest or Instagram, and though it seemed like everything was at your fingertips when it came to planning a wedding or a bathroom remodel, it was so frustrating to have to rely on magazines or in-store shopping when it came to looking for nursery inspiration. So after all those questions came flooding in about Melisa’s nursery, we knew we had something special. The next day we registered the URL ProjectNursery.com, and we started a super simple blog. I laugh a little bit thinking back on those early days. Melisa and I were both totally overwhelmed first-time mamas, trying to figure out life with newborns, but we still had the chutzpa to start a business together. Fast-forward to today and Project Nursery has grown to attract a highly connected, design-conscious community, an e-commerce shop with over 5000 products and our own Project Nursery line, including nursery furniture, paint, décor, bedding and electronics. It hasn’t been an overnight success or any one thing going viral—it’s been hard work, dedication and a shared drive to be the best moms and business partners we can!  So after all those questions came flooding in about Melisa’s nursery, we knew we had something special. The next day we registered the URL ProjectNursery.com, and we started a super simple blog. I laugh a little bit thinking back on those early days. Melisa and I were both totally overwhelmed first-time mamas, trying to figure out life with newborns, but we still had the chutzpa to start a business together. Fast-forward to today and Project Nursery has grown to attract a highly connected, design-conscious community, an e-commerce shop with over 5000 products and our own Project Nursery line, including nursery furniture, paint, décor, bedding and electronics. It hasn’t been an overnight success or any one thing going viral—it’s been hard work, dedication and a shared drive to be the best moms and business partners we can! Q. How are you looking to support expecting and experienced moms? A. From the very beginning, we made it part of our mission to support women and mothers. Our Project Gallery for example, is solely about creating a warm and supportive community built on showcasing reader creativity and design. Members share their own nurseries and celebrations, compliment one another, ask for design advice and inspire each other.  And from a business perspective, with six children between the two of us, we know firsthand how hard it is to balance motherhood with work and personal responsibilities with aspirations. We have built our entire Project Nursery team of work from home moms (and one Dad too!) who share the same goal of wanting to keep a professional aspect of their lives vibrant but still have the flexibility to raise their kids. It’s pretty awesome that our editor can be based in New York while our Social Media Director lives in Texas—we even manage to work with our extended team in international time zones! Q. When did you decide to move from just providing design inspiration to selling furniture and décor products? A. That’s actually a funny story, and margaritas were involved! We were on a trip to Mexico together with our husbands celebrating my birthday, and we ended up having an impromptu business meeting about what was next for PN during a long lunch. We knew we were going to have to adapt and grow in this ever-changing online world. We determined that although we knew very little about the retail world, launching an e-commerce component to our brand was the natural progression. Our audience was already coming to us for sources and product information, so why not offer a one-stop shop instead of referring them elsewhere.  We knew we had the brand and the support of our community to make it work, and although it’s been a ton of hard work with a lot of challenges, it was the right decision. Now we have a gorgeous and thriving online shop with thousands of products thanks to our e-commerce team—and so much more on the horizon! Q. How do you decide which products to offer on your site? A. All the credit goes to our amazing shop team, in particular our buyer Nikki! She’s the eyes and ears of The Project Nursery Shop, and with a toddler and baby keeping her busy at home, she is the real deal! Nikki and the rest of the team really know not only what is trendy from a design perspective but what products are well-made and actually work! If we sell a product, that means it’s something we would buy ourselves. We’ve always stayed authentic in that way, and it’s something that has set us apart from our competitors. Q. What are a few of your best sellers for sale on your site? A. The wallpaper category has pretty much exploded. I’m thrilled to say that Project Nursery has quickly become THE place to shop for wallpaper, wall murals and wall decals. We’ve made it super easy to hone in on what you are looking for in terms of style, color or pattern, and our customer service department ensures the ordering process goes smoothly. Many of our bestsellers are wallpaper, including the Snowy Rose self-adhesive wallpaper, and we love seeing the finished results in lots of gorgeous nurseries.
The Fela Chandelier and the Toco Swivel Glider are two other hot items right now. In terms of gear, the Lovevery Playgym has been a big registry item, and our Clementine Crib Sheet sold out super fast. We’re happy to have that one back in stock in a few weeks. And of course, we’ve got to have something for Dad, too. Our exclusive “Dads are Dope” tee was a smash hit this Father’s Day, which really made us smile. 
 Q. You have also created your own collection/line of Project Nursery products that you sell only in the PN shop, what inspired those pieces? A. Melisa and I are both really creative people, so designing our own products was a natural fit. We tried to be strategic about which types of products we wanted to put our name behind so we weren’t just creating more of the same. We understand that the baby product space can be totally overwhelming for new parents, and we wanted our products to help make parents’ lives easier not more complex. Our flagship monitor with the accompanying mini monitor is a perfect example of that. We were the first to introduce the concept of both a wearable baby monitor and a wearable mom tracker.  After feedback from our community, we refined the line even more and pared it down to only the most efficient and needed products. We feel that’s one of the things that sets us apart—our engaged community consisting of real moms and dads who can offer their feedback during the whole process.  Just last year, we released our nursery furniture collaboration—The Wooster Collection—with Karla Dubois. We’ve had so much fun designing products; it’s actually pretty funny how excited we get looking at wood swatches and fabric samples. This past year, we even made a trip to Europe to see firsthand what was trending in nursery furniture and décor. Keep on the lookout for us to expand our Project Nursery family of furniture, gear and décor. Q. You share lots of nursery and kids’ room design inspiration – what overall style or elements do |
Lisa Janvrin
A self-starter in pursuit of all things smart, savvy and stylish. Categories
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