Lisa Marino: The Dopple Registry

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2024/11/02

Lisa Marino is the CEO and Co-Founder of The Dopple Registry, a platform revolutionizing the baby registry and subscription box models to meet the evolving needs of parents. Marino is a Hispanic female executive and mother of two with over 20 years of experience in digital media. She envisions The Dopple Registry as a seamless, supportive shopping platform for parents, featuring high-quality, luxury baby products curated by expert moms. Additionally, sheserves as a board member for Pacific Clinics in California. She is also a board member of Pacific Clinics in California. The Dopple Registry has been featured in Today’s Parent, The Chicago Journal, and Mommies Reviews.

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: We are here today with Lisa Marino, the CEO and co-founder of the Dopple Registry. Today, we’ll discuss advice for new dads, things dads need, and how to be a better father. The focus is parenting, family health, wellness, pregnancy, and more. With the Dopple Registry, how do you provide a simplified shopping experience for new parents? 

Lisa Marino: Let’s take a step back for a moment. The Dopple motto is, “It takes a village to raise a family.” Our mission as a company is to activate that village for every family in this country. Let’s discuss why that matters. First, we’ve created a revolutionary gifting platform that evolves as families do. We’re starting with a baby registry, which is something everyone understands. It’s also a time when families spend a large chunk of money out of pocket to prepare for the birth of a child. On top of that, many families take a hit on income, as one or both parents often stay home with the baby.

This results in a double whammy of financial impact on families. Today’s registries fall short because they’re event-driven. Once the birth or wedding happens, they become obsolete. They haven’t still need to address how to manage recurring purchases, such as diapers, formula, and other weekly or monthly needs. You need to feed your kids and ensure the house has formula.

Additionally, today’s registries don’t need to account for services in meaningful ways. Think about night nannies, doulas, midwives, dog walkers, or childcare if you’re not a first-time parent and already have kids at home. Meal services are also included in the existing registry experience. Today’s registries focus too much on stuff.

Consider platforms like Babylist, Amazon, Walmart, and Target. They sell products. While you need those items, families require more wraparound services and the ability to receive gifted recurring purchases sustainably. By leaving these critical components off the table, families need a clearer way to communicate their needs to their village.

For example, we had a beta tester, a mom having her second child, who was excited when she saw the opportunity for therapy services. One of the services we offer is mental health therapy. She said, “I struggled with postpartum depression so badly with my first child. If I can have therapy sessions gifted to me, I can address it early and prevent it from becoming overwhelming.” This has a huge impact not just on her mental health but on her entire family’s well-being.

Again, it gives families access to things they normally wouldn’t have in a group-gifted environment. Now, we have every family rank their top 10 items, and we guide gifters toward those items. Gifters are often budget-constrained so that the average gifter will contribute between $25 and $100.

You have major donors, especially grandparents, best friends, or close family, who will contribute $100 if not thousands. But for the most part, the gifting range is between $25 and $100. We’ve removed that budget constraint because we fractionalize every gift over $100. This way, we encourage gifters to contribute to the items that matter most to them in the top ten. So, you don’t care about the doula or the night nurse, but you care about diapers, and you’ll buy one month of diapers for the family.

The mom’s cousin might buy another month, and her coworker might buy yet another month. Suddenly, 12 gifters have reverse-engineered a 12-month diaper subscription, with each month gifted by a different person within an affordable gifting budget. That profoundly changes how people think about pregnancy and what they need. Meals are another great example. We encourage every family to add between 20 and 40 healthy, premade meals to their registry, which can support any diet and be delivered to your house. No one who brings home a newborn wants to cook.

That’s just the reality. So, if you’re breastfeeding or up with the baby in the middle of the night and you’re hungry, instead of ordering McDonald’s from DoorDash, you can go to the refrigerator, grab a healthy meal that spends three minutes in the microwave, and you’re ready to go. That’s what we’re so excited about. 

Jacobsen: As this applies to dads, it’s more about families. You’re running pilots with different service provider collectives and state and local government agencies. Is this to create a platform that connects service providers and families?

Marino: The platform levels the playing field because, today, these services exist, but most are paid out of pocket by families, which makes them available primarily to more affluent people. In our model, because you’re reaching out to your village, these services can now be available to everyone. For lower- and middle-income families, we can further factor in subsidies to become part of the village beyond just friends and family.

Jacobsen: What types of structured services do you see families choosing the most? Is it a year’s worth of diapers or something similar?

Marino: Definitely diapers and meals. Those are the top items because they are real family pain points daily. But, especially for families who aren’t first-time parents, they need extra nanny help when the baby first comes home. Who will care for the other kids while mom or dad cares for the newborn?

Those are critical ones. We’ve partnered with a nanny group that has access to about 3,500 nannies across the US. So, when families come on board and don’t have their nanny but need some short-term help while the mom is on maternity leave, we can match them with a nanny and get that group gifted.

Jacobsen: What about things more on the periphery of need but still sufficient to be kept as part of the platform? You mentioned things like a year’s supply of diapers. Would something like therapy be considered more on the periphery of need, or is it more core?

Marino: I’d say think of pre- and postpartum doula services. Today, they sit at the periphery but should be at the core. Once a family brings a newborn home, it takes time for the stress to start showing its impact.

In the first week or two, you’ll have home visits from a lactation consultant, maybe a doula, or a couple of other services sponsored by the hospital or the state. However, the stress impacts the family after these visits are no longer paid for. Closing the gap with additional visits or services helps keep the family healthy.

Tons of data show this. For example, one of the charts we have—which I’d be happy to send you—shows that 25% of moms experience postpartum depression (PPD). Moms who receive doula and other perinatal support services reduce that rate by 57%. By ensuring families have access to these critical services, which they may not think about or know they need—especially lower- and middle-income families who can’t afford it—we bring these services front and center, ensuring they’re not paid out of pocket by the family.

We can help close the gap in maternal and child health. And as they say, “Happy wife, happy life!” It helps keep the family healthy.

Jacobsen: How has this company developed?

Marino: So, I acquired Dopple in August of 2023. Before being introduced to Dopple, I was already building a baby registry, but it was a classic registry that would compete with what’s out there today. When Dopple came across my desk, I said, “Wow.”

The ability to handle subscriptions and recurring purchases compared to a regular registry can be a profound change. Since then, the vision has grown tremendously over the last 9 or 10 months. What has happened as a result is, after acquiring Dopple and rebooting the revenue stream, getting the moms on the subscription clothing box business flowing again, I realized that the combination of the registry I was building plus the Dopple platform could transform families’ lives significantly if we did it right. The opportunity was so big that it made sense to sell off the media piece of the business. That segment brought in a few million in annual revenue and gave me a great income, but it would always be more impactful and offer as big an opportunity as what Dopple sits on today. So, I sold it in January and have been focused on Dopple and the registry ever since.

Jacobsen: What is the hardest aspect to work around with the Dopple Registry? Is it ensuring that certain systems and processes are integrated well enough for a better customer experience?

Marino: Actually, it’s always about the customer experience. But because we’re offering something that doesn’t exist here, it’s about ensuring the messaging is clear. It’s about ensuring everyone understands the wins and the benefits of thinking about things holistically.

That’s where our partnerships with some of these state and local governments come into play. Their mission at these agencies is to create messaging and ensure that everyone knows they have access to services and solutions. We come in as the partner and say, “All right, we can connect everyone.” For example, they might have funds allocated or available, and they’re trying to build solutions to connect healthcare systems, service providers, and moms. Well, guess what? We’re the platform that can do all that for them.

It’s about educating and changing families’ perspectives on what it means to raise children and how we do that. For example, we go well beyond the birth of the child. If a mom signs up for 12 months of diapers, we deliver those diapers every month. If she goes online and says, “Oh, my son is no longer a size 2; he’s now a size 3,” we send a new box with the correct size, and away we go.

We can offer many other things because we’re serving parents beyond birth. What we’re launching in December by Black Friday is our wish list component. Now, we’re not just doing baby registries; families with older kids can build wish lists for birthdays, holidays, or anything they want. Again, you can include services, products, or contributions to a 529 account. Imagine being able to swap out all the plastic toys you get for your kids during Christmas and holidays!

It ends up in the landfill, but with 529 contributions, even if it’s just $25 over 17 years, that adds up. And you’re leveraging your village to get what your family truly needs. Other great examples include swim lessons, private coaches, or therapy. Whether it’s mental health or, like in my daughter’s case—she’s autistic—maybe she needs occupational therapy. There are various situations where families need help, and this allows them to prioritize, communicate, and get some or all of it paid for.

Jacobsen: How, given your experience as a model for this, does that influence your decision-making when assessing customer needs and identifying what families are most likely to want? How do you foresee, stage by stage, the next areas of need for families?

Marino: Well, let’s step back briefly and discuss how Dopple became a concept. It’s literally over two decades in the making. When I had my daughter—my first child—we were on welfare for a variety of reasons, which we don’t need to get into. Not only did the state of California help us, but we had to build our village to get through.

Our parents bought nursery furniture, my dad bought a year’s worth of diapers, and our siblings paid for electric bills. Our friends from business school took us out to dinner, paid for it, and gave us the leftovers. Everyone came together as a community and supported us.

We’ve built that sense of community into a platform because I know what it means to pull together all those resources in a scalable way for people to get through tough times. Taking the stress off families is critical.

So, when we look at where we’re going next today, it’s more scientific than our origin story. We’re conducting questionnaires and market research to figure out our next steps. We’re already considering a range of opportunities for Q1 of 2025 and have started those research processes.

Jacobsen: Where are you hoping to expand the registry beyond Q4? What about the next few years?

Marino: So, think about it this way: We start with baby registries, but we’ll also have wish lists. As families evolve—whether having more kids or as the kids get older—we’ve got an entire platform that can help activate your village for those needs. Ultimately, I live in the sandwich generation and care for my parents and kids.

Let’s say my dad needed surgery, and insurance only covered so much. We could create a wish list for what he needs as an older adult, which differs from what you need when having kids. We can assemble a wish list, prioritize the items, and have them all gifted.

We can handle any stage of life, and that’s what’s so exciting for us—we evolve as families evolve.

Jacobsen: Any final points based on today’s conversation?

Marino: No, we’re good. Hopefully, this will be interesting, and you will see how it impacts dads.

Jacobsen: Thank you so much. 

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