Minnesota company will soon see its baby products on Walmart, Target shelves across the country

Busy Baby started by making a suctioned placemat with tethered accessories that can entertain an infant while adults talk or eat. In 2018, Fynbo Benike spent $16,000 designing a prototype with Klugonyx, a Utah product development firm with factories in China.

She hired a lawyer, scored her first sale in 2019 and started racking up design patents. Now there are other products such as Busy Baby silicone bibs with food-catching pouches, tethered pacifiers and bumpy "teething spoons."

"They are all tethered," Fynbo Benike said. "Our goal is to keep everything off the ground."

So far Busy Baby has $15 million in sales, mostly through online orders and 400 small retail stores such as Little Roos in Chaska and My Happy Place in Zumbrota. Along the way, Fynbo Benike won a division prize in the Minnesota Cup competition, won another startup contest and in 2019 appeared on "Shark Tank," receiving an investment offer but walking away from it because she didn't like the terms.

The goal of Busy Baby products is to keep stuff off the floor, said founder Beth Fynbo Benike. (Anthony Souffle) As the company grew, it moved from Fynbo Benike's basement to her garage, and then to a neighbor's pole barn. In May 2022, she bought a former farm that came with three warehouses. She rents two and works in the third.

"So now we ... have one consolidated location for the warehouse and distribution center," she said.