What Now?

Four years ago, I took a trip to Phoenix to visit some friends. One of them had two small children and was cloth diapering. Now I had no idea people still did this or that there were versions without pins and rubber pants. She was buying hers off eBay and playing with patterns and her own designs and having a small child to put them on, able to make on the fly adjustments. I came home, told my husband about it and started sewing a couple to try on my niece, who was potty training at the time. They worked great and some people at the base saw them and asked me to sew a few for them. I sold some off and on for three years, mostly to parents of toddlers.

Then, when I got pregnant, I pulled out the small pattern my friend had given me and sewed twenty or so for my own bundle of joy. I took them to the hospital only to realize that he couldn't wear them till his cord fell off. So I waited a couple of weeks until the cord fell off and with great excitement, put them on him and waited. An hour later, his entire outfit was soaked. I wondered if I hadn't put it on tight enough so I changed him and waited again. Same result...

Turns out my long skinny newborn doesn't fill the leg holes well enough and I couldn't get them any tighter. Back to the drawing board I went, or rather, to the computer to see how other mom's making these at home were designing theirs. What I found was very depressing...

Three years ago, encouraged by the fact I was selling these, my sister and I hatched a plan to set up a manufacturing facility to produce these in bulk to sell to large retailers like Target, who have a reputation for selling green products and a track record of not being evil like another large retailer who shall remain unnamed. I couldn't understand why these had not been marketed on a large scale before.

Three years ago, there were maybe two or three companies that marketed machine fabricated cloth diapers and the designs weren't that great. Fast forward to the present and there were at least fifteen awesomely designed products that would go from birth to potty training, reasonable priced and mass manufactured in the US. So I could work on my design and still proceed with the business, but the stuff that is out there is great and I really have no suggestions for improving the products. You can buy them through online retailers or small, independently owned 'green' shops, and the products are reasonably priced. I am a little bummed that my business idea has swarmed the market and am left a little lost as to where to go from here. The question I do still have is why doesn't anyone offer them at a Target or Babies 'R Us? It seems like this is a really great opportunity missed as something like 15 to 20 percent of babies are cloth diapered.