eco-POLITAN picks up where modern mommy gear left off.

• Author: Taylor, Mike
• Position: SMALL [biz]

With crying babies creating an apt soundtrack for a store specializing in "eco-friendly gear for the modern mom," eco-POLITAN owner Robin Morris held court from behind the cash register the last Sunday in January, expounding on the merits of cloth diapers versus the disposable variety.

"I'm going to try to it," one young woman said, gathering her goods and heading toward the door.

"Call me if you have any questions about washing them," Morris said.

When I last talked to Robin Morris for a small-biz column in March 2009, she had left her corporate job with a telecom company to launch an online store, ModernMommyGear.com, specializing in eco-friendly baby products. Unlike a lot of online retailers, Morris actually stocked her 600-square-foot basement with the products she sold and gave demonstrations to fellow moms who more often than not became regular customers.

A year later, Morris has expanded beyond her online/basement model and opened eco-POLITAN in the Lakewood City Commons across from the Belmar shopping center. It's an expanded brick-and-mortar version of what she started doing at home when her first child, Levi, was about 6 months old.

"I stocked up on a few things I thought would be better sellers in a store like this," Robin said, "things like wooden toys, which online are very heavy to ship."

Levi, a test pilot for so many of the baby products that earned a spot on eco-POLITAN's shelves, is now 2 1/2 years old, and the Morrises also have 4-month-old daughter Bianca, who was in the care of husband Paul Morris during much of eco-POLITAN's first weekend of business.

"I'm the lone free employee," Paul said, as he walked around the store with his daughter resting on his shoulder. There also are two paid employees, both product users and "expert moms" as Robin Morris puts it.

"I actually started with great clients who have become great friends," she says of her two employees.

The economy has caused a lot of businesses to close and countless others to delay getting off the ground at all. But the recession was actually an impetus for eco-POLITAN's launch. Their first thought of the store came when Paul was laid off from his IT job early in 2009.

"I said, 'Well, this might be a good time to do it because we could do it together,"' Robin recalled thinking. Paul found work within two months, so they put the...