Little Feminist, big mission.
My chat with a founder who’s creating change, one story at a time.
Representation goes a long way in helping us build an understanding of all our differences — and more importantly, our similarities. When it comes to children’s books (and, let’s face it, most of popular culture), there’s a lot of work to do.
I spoke with Brittany Murlas, founder and CEO of Little Feminist, about the world of children’s publishing and the challenges of having a brand that simply celebrates all kinds of people.
What is Little Feminist?
We’re a children’s book company. We used to be a children’s subscription company, and now we’re publishing our own three books that are being printed as we speak — which is very exciting and a little bit terrifying. Our mission is to help families diversify their bookshelves.
What was the inspiration behind that?
My last job was at a company called BabyList, which is a universal baby registry. I love books, and I noticed that books are a very special category among all gift-givers, not just me. I think millennials want fewer things, but books break the rule.
At BabyList we partnered with the Clinton Health Access Initiative. They’d funded this project called “Talk Read Sing” where they talked about the importance of reading and speaking to 0–3-year-olds. It was then that I realized how — and this is my own white privilege — to realize how not diverse books are. Learning that less than 17% of books published in this year will feature a person of color is terrifying. Then Trump got elected and it became even more terrifying, so I quit my job.
It felt like if something was going to happen…if the world was gonna end soon…I had to do something.
That’s so much better than fleeing the country.
When people talk about diverse children’s books, they talk about how important it is for kids of color to see kids of color in books. But Trump being elected made me think about how important it is for white people to have books with kids of color in them. I didn’t know what Little Feminist would look like, but I knew I wanted to work in children’s books and get diverse books out there.
I’d love to talk about the name specifically, because I know these books are about so much more than feminism.
Yeah. It took me about a month and a half of being absolutely terrified to use that word. I put out some test ads that did really well, partly because there was a lot of vitriol. A lot of folks had shitty things to say. All of my mentors in the business space said, “Don’t do it, it’s a bad idea. You’re gonna pigeonhole yourself. People will assume it’s just a product for girls.”
Is there a lot of confusion there?
When we did that first test, 15% of parents of boys indicated they were interested in the product and now it’s about 30–35%. So it’s bigger. In our boilerplate, I say “Little Feminist is for 0- to 9-year-old girls and boys (boys can be feminists too).” It’s not always assumed, unfortunately. Here [in the Bay Area], it is.
We are definitely in a bubble here. So how do you get the skeptics on board?
That’s a good question. When we did early testing, people were like “I love you and I would buy this, but I’m hesitant to buy this for my sister-in-law because I don’t know how they feel about this word.” So from the get-go, I thought — ok, Little Feminist just won’t be a popular gift. And I’ve been proven wrong. For more than 50% of our subscribers, it’s a gift. So I don’t know the answer but I know that it’s surmountable.
The first iteration of the product was a like a Stitch Fix for books, where we picked books based on your preferences. That was called Otter and Pup. It went fine but ultimately the question was, how are we gonna beat Amazon? It didn’t seem differentiated. So I decided — if we have a specific brand and a very clear mission, we’ll find our tribe quicker. And that’s what happened.
We talk about that a lot, too. Some brands try really hard to reach everyone at once, when really, it’s better to zero in.
Yeah, niche. I think we spend less money on marketing and reach more people as a result because we have a specific message — and Amazon is never ever gonna launch a feminist book club for kids. Not in a million years. Because they can’t take that risk.
What are the challenges of standing out in the world of children’s products? It seems like every day there are more products that put kids in front of screens.
Definitely. Especially because we’re a bootstrapped product, we have less money to compete with Disney when they have Frozen ads. But parents see their kids having too much screen time, so books are the one thing they don’t want their kids to have screen time on. E-book sales are higher in every other category except children’s books. It’s steady, it’s not exponentially growing. But children’s books have stayed steady as the e-book revolution has happened.
There’s something nice about a physical book.
Yeah, I think especially with little ones. If I’m gonna hand my kid a screen, why not have it be something that I can’t replace with a physical product?
Do you remember any of your favorite books from childhood?
So, The Paperback Princess was one.
I was gonna mention that one!
On our bookshelf I have books that are really important to me. I’m trying to think of stories I had as a kid that featured people of color, and I probably only had two or three. My favorite book now is Jabari Jumps. It’s by a white lady — that’s one thing we talk about a lot. There’s pros and cons.
What’s your hope for the future of the company?
Our subscription box is a way for us to test new books — to see what people want, to be having a conversation, doing research on what’s out there and what’s not. To stay abreast of emerging artists and illustrators. My vision is to use the subscription box to have very data-driven publishing. It’s usually a room full of white people that decides what does and doesn’t get published. If we base it on what people want, or what there’s a lack of…nobody’s really doing that.
We tabled at the Oakland Pride parade last September, and if I had a nickel for every young person who came up to me asking “How can I sign up?…”. I was like, “This product is for much smaller people than you are right now!” [laughter]. But they still wanted to join. There was a very automatic excitement about our brand with the younger generation. My hope is that as those people get older and have kids, that’s a good thing for us. For everybody.
