A budding Australian entrepreneur has come up with a solution to an age-old problem: balding babies.
Victorian mum Nikki Bardis came up with her hack – silk cot slips – after noticing her little one started to develop a hairless patch.
“When I was pregnant with my first daughter I went shopping for all the very best I could buy for her, which was organic cotton sheets. But every time I picked her up from her bassinet I saw a little cluster of hair and she was starting to get a bald spot,” she told news.com.au.
“Ask anybody that has a child, they’ve noticed bald spots.”
Drawing inspiration from her Scottish grandmother, who swore by silk pillowcases, Bardis experimented with an adult-sized one, tucked into the bassinet.
The theory is that friction caused by babies rubbing their heads against cotton bedding can lead to hair loss. The 34-year-old managed to stop the hair-loss with silk but “It wasn’t very practical, it would move around.”
“I thought at that point I should do something about this,” adds Bardis. “But life gets in the way, I was busy with my first baby and learning how to become a mum.”
After selling her successful business Beach Candy, a range of beach towels, Bardis launched her new venture: SilkyTots.
“Silk is an expensive product so we wanted to make sure it was very, very well made. I wanted to design it to be in line with the SIDS safety guidelines which is no loose fabric in the cot, so it had to be secured,” she continues.
“I got about 10 different factories. That took a long time because each one took about six weeks. My advice for anybody is get your prototype perfect in Australia then send it there for them to copy. Trying to communicate (changes) they would say, ‘Yes, yes I understand’, but it would be wrong.”
After launching in May, SilkyTots saw immediate success. Within the first four months, she had sold out of stock while gaining an impressive 5000 followers on Instagram. Since beginning, she’s seen more than $120 000 in revenue.
Bardis was quick note the huge opportunities ahead, citing the range of benefits that silk has.
“Silk is very good for the skin, eczema, also asthma because silk is uninhabitable for dust mites, mould and fungus. It’s much healthier. It’s crazy that nobody has done this before,” explains Bardis.
While Bardis isn’t sure it’ll make her a billionaire, she does acknowledge that “people are having babies every day.”
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