Sewing Diapers for Fun and Profit, The Epic Continues

“Hello, Calvin Klein? Yes, this is Levi Strauss. I invented blue jeans and it really hurts my feelings when you make jeans that look JUST LIKE MINE and then charge more for them. Besides, using my ideas is really unethical and we are supposed to be supporting each other and it is not fair. Whaddya mean yours don’t look like mine? They are blue, they are made of denim, they have two legs, and you use zippers – that was MY idea – and buttons and…. Fine, I am gonna go tell all my friends you stole my ideas and they are gonna write nasty things about you ALL OVER THE INTERNET and try to put  you out of business.”

• Even with a small idea, you will be copied. Case in point, I sell hand-dyed prefolds. That is not an original idea. I got it from someone else, but when they stopped selling them I started dying them myself to meet my customer’s needs. I experimented, chose colors and named them myself. Someone else in my area is now selling dyed prefolds with the EXACT same color names. Hmmm….
• People will copy your entire product line. There are at least two new web sites in my area selling the EXACT same brand names I sell. At least, the ones you can get into without a 2 year waiting list. Hmmm….
• Yes, there really is a 2 year waiting list for some brands. It took me almost that long to get a BumGenius account. I am still on the waiting list for some other popular brands.
• Heaven help you if someone takes a personal dislike to you and starts badmouthing your brand all over the popular diaper boards. This has not happened to me personally, but I have seen it happen over and over to others. The internet is a blessing and a curse. If they love you, you will be a star and your diapers will sell faster than you can make them – even faster than you can pay someone else to make them. If they hate you….

So why do I do it?

The perks of cloth diaper selling….

• I get to play fashion designer. I can choose really cute fabrics and make diapers out of them. When a diaper is super cute, I like to think it makes the parent hug their baby a few extra times that day.
• I love helping to keep diapers out of our landfills. Every baby in cloth keeps 300 pounds of wood, 50 pounds of petroleum feedstocks and 20 pounds of chlorine out of the environment EACH YEAR. (See the RDA for more diaper facts.)
• I truly believe that disposable diapers are horrible for babies and horrible for the environment and that cloth diapers are healthier.
• I love helping parents feel good about what they are doing for their babies. Cloth diapers encourage more parent-baby interaction. When you need to change your baby every 2 hours you spend more time talking to and entertaining baby to keep them still. This is called bonding, teaching and other good stuff. When you can leave your baby in a diaper for 6 hours (or 12 HOURS like the new diaper Pampers is testing — eew!) you can forget to talk to them and make eye contact.
• I like meeting cool people and helping them to do the best thing for their babies. There are so many wonderful people who cloth diaper that I feel priviliged to know them.
• Daytime TV bores me so I need to keep up with the drama in the WAHM diaper world.
• Cloth diapers save money. No matter what propaganda the sposie makers/users want you to believe, an average family will save thousands of dollars using cloth diapers. Even if you use a high-end diaper like the Thirsties All in One, you will save an average of $15 per hour that you spend washing diapers. Seriously. Three loads of laundry a week could save you thousands of dollars per kid.

I love what I do most days. There are days when the sewing machine is dying and customers are cranky and suppliers are out of stock and I wonder why I don’t go back to the professional world where I got paid several times what I make now and someone else kept the bills paid. I could, but I’d miss the latest diaper drama….