Sewing Diapers for Fun and Profit

It might seem funny that my house is full of cloth diapers, diaper fabrics (80 yards of bamboo velour anyone?) and various cloth diaper accessories when my baby is still weeks away. Funnier still when I confess that my own daughter has hardly a diaper to cover her bum when she arrives – despite the fact that my husband claimed he saw smoke coming from my serger last night because I was sewing so fast. Sure, she has a few I have pulled from inventory to play around with, but the vast majority of her diapers are still in the “cut but not sewn” pile. Well, this is the WAHM (Work at Home Mom) cloth diaper business in all its gory detail. And yet another case of the shoemaker’s children going without shoes.

Since I refuse to put nasty disposables on my kid, she may be reduced to wearing her dad’s t-shirts as diapers.

Sewing cloth diapers for sale must have great appeal since my diaper fabrics coop gets at least three new wanna-be-WAHMs each week and I get a fair number of emails that basically read, “Tell me everything you have spent the last 2 1/2 years killing yourself to learn so I can steal your business.” Actually, a few people have even had the nerve to come to my house as customers, then explain that they are basically casing the place so they can steal my business. One was supposed to be my midwife, but that is another story for another time.

Ok, no one has actually used the word steal, but they do tell me that they want to know everything I know and that they then intend to use that information to create a business that will target my same customer base. Or as the midwife put it so eloquently, “My diapers will be better than yours, and you have been too sick to sew much lately, so how could that take business away from you?” (Mind you, she had not yet actually SEWN a single diaper – nor did she have a pattern developed, but she was SURE hers were going to be better than mine, better than the Bum Genius 3.0  and Wahmies One Size she had gotten from me, etc.)

“Hello, Coca Cola? I am starting my own beverage company and I was wondering if you would let me know your recipes, your supplier list, how much profit you make per bottle, and any other trade secrets that have allowed you to maintain a market edge over all these years. In fact, if you don’t mind, can you sell me a few supplies at your cost in order to get me started?…Hello?”

So, I tell them all the same thing I wish someone had made clear to me in the beginning. Most of them get huffy and think I am trying to prevent competition. That is not true, I believe that every cloth diaper seller is part of the grassroots marketing effort we need to save the planet, save families from the recession, and improve the health of babies everywhere. If every person who wants to sell cloth diapers converted just 2 new cloth diaper users a week, we would all have enough business to keep all of our sewing machines smoking.

The truth is, sewing or selling cloth diapers as a business has to be a labor of love. It is NOT a pathway to riches. Plan on at LEAST two years to start seeing a paycheck (seriously, ask around, this is what I have been told by some of the biggest names in the business as well as some of the popular niche diaper makers, this goes for retail and for sewing your own diapers.) This is a very, very competitive industry. Getting your name out there takes hard, hard work and then even more hard work. I have worked 18 hours a day for the last 2 1/2 years to start seeing even modest success. Every penny I earn goes back into supplies, more inventory, or marketing.

There are perks to this business, sure, but first, let me tell you the downsides:

• The profits are LOW. Honest. For most retail you can count on a 100% markup. That is unheard of with cloth diapers. Why? Well, most popular brands are made in the US – which means higher labor costs than those made overseas. Even those made overseas usually are trying for fair wages and fair trade. So, you start with relatively expensive materials, then add a fair wage, then add shipping, profit for the manufacturer, profit for the retailer, and the fact that customers want a great fitting diaper that will stand up to hundreds of washes and won’t make their baby’s butt look big- for less than $20 (try finding a pair of jeans that fits that description!). Wait, don’t stop there, you also need to pay for marketing, web site/technology, packaging materials, taxes, credit card processing fees, and….
• Customers have been conditioned to believe that shipping should be free. I keep telling USPS and UPS that shipping should be free, but they have the nerve to keep charging me hundreds of dollars a month to ship stuff. Yes, hundreds.
• Some customers say they love to support WAHMs – but they want Walmart pricing. They ask for discounts for ordering more than one, ordering for the first time, ordering for the second time, or because it is Wednesday, they claim to have twins, or they expect you to price match because they found someone else who will give it to them cheaper (then why are you asking ME for a discount, go buy from the THEM). If you eat away all of the WAHM’s profits with discounts, returns, free shipping, free samples, etc., what is “supporting” the WAHM in question?
• Anyone who can get their hands on a yard of PUL (polyurethane laminate, a popular waterproof fabric) and a sewing machine will seriously consider setting up shop because they think they can make better diapers for less. Maybe they can, but if you are smart you will charge enough for your handmade products to provide yourself with at least minumum wage for the time you take away from your family. Be sure to count ALL your time, including the 2 hours you spent yesterday explaining how great cloth diapers are to a potential customer–who then went online and found them elsewhere for 50 cents cheaper.
• People WILL copy your great ideas. I see it every single day. In my oh-so-humble opinion, there is very little new under the sun, and diapers are pretty much kinda the same and they are made to, well, catch pee and stuff. But there is a lot of crankiness surrounding this with some sellers spending $15,000-20,000 or more to patent their ideas. Then they have to defend their patents at great expense. Some ideas are not patentable – and some people miss the patent window. If you have an idea, start selling the product, then wait 12 months before trying to patent it you are out of luck. You can not patent it if you have sold it for longer than 1 year before filing for a patent. You can’t patent some things anyway, but that does not stop people from getting really cranky when someone else takes a small idea and creates a different looking product using that small idea. I am honestly not sure that any of the crankiness and such is worth it, but it happens a lot. Now, if you want to make a diaper that falls under someone else’s patent, you will need a license (such as for making pocket diapers) or you will need to figure out a way to make a similar diaper that does not violate the patent. This is why there are at least 10 ways I have seen people make a pocket diaper since pocket diapers are a great idea and licenses are hard to come by (yes, I do have a pocket diaper license so my pocket diapers are legitimate!).