In the age of Pinterest and Etsy, the days of crepe paper, balloons, and party hats are so yesterday. Now pictures of the perfect party flood news feeds and boards — a trend that now puts the pressure on parents to step up their game and throw their children parties worthy of a Pinterest pin. 

As Andrea Walker (LA’03) started to think about celebrating her daughter’s second birthday, she began compiling lots of decorating ideas. 

“I really wanted to do something special but I am not crafty at all,” says Walker. “I spent hours searching for all of the stuff that I needed to re-create the designs in pictures.”

At the time, she was working in Washington, DC, as the head of sales for her family’s real estate business based out of Colombia. Although she was very comfortable making global real estate deals, the thought of planning the party by herself brought instant stress. So she reached out to a neighborhood friend who had more than a decade of event planning experience and just happened to have a child with the exact same birthday. 

When they decided to team up and plan the party together, things got a bit easier but it was still a struggle to assemble everything. But all of the planning conversations began to lay the foundation for a business idea — a perfect party service. Over the course of the next year, they launched a designer birthday-in-a-box business — SimplyGenie.com.

SimplyGenie.com is a one-stop shop for unique and hand-crafted party supplies. It offers 35 themes that can be customized by color, child’s name, age, and even translated into another language.

“Moms today want something personalized and fashionable. They want their theme to be different and not what they are finding in the large party stores,” Walker says.

“A startup is like having a newborn. It takes everything you have and there are endless things to do.”

—Andrea Walker

One way Walker strives to be different is by using illustrators from around the world to develop new themes. Every three months, new themes are added to the company’s six collections, and the designs are getting noticed. After just launching in January, SimplyGenie has been featured on Zulily and RueLaLa.

“A startup is like having a newborn. It takes everything you have, and there are endless things to do,” says Walker. “Every day you see a little bit of progress. You see your efforts paying off.”