The Monster Under The Bed

"Raiff turn your light off, and go to sleep. It's bedtime."
"No, mommy, I'm scared."
"Scared of what?"
"The monster under the bed."

I looked into those big brown eyes and saw fear, real and deep. No amount of softly spoken encouragements could convince my three year old that there was no monster under the bed. Where do kids get this idea? Finally, clinging tightly to my neck, together we crawled out of bed, and looked at the dark beneath. I shined the flashlight all around, and turned on every light, and with trepidation, he opened his eyes and saw that there really wasn't a monster lurking there, just a few legos, a pair or shoes, and a candy wrapper.

We all have that monster under the bed; that thing that frightens us beyond all reason. The thing we're simply too scared to even look at. For me, it was the thought of loosing my business. When we first started, the only goal was to be able to earn enough money to stay home with the kids. But, as the kids grew, so did the business, the business became our sole source of income. Everything we had was tied to the business, and the thought of all of those uncontrollable factors that could lead to the company's immediate demise, robbed me of my peace. I lay awake at night, wondering "what if". There are literally tens of thousands of ways I could loose everything and I'd be powerless to stop it. It was a thought so frightening, a pressure so great, I simply could not bare it. I ran myself ragged trying to control those uncontrollable things. Finally, I reached my breaking point, and realized I could not live with that level of fear and stress any longer. So, slowly, and with trepidation, I faced that big, scary thought. If I lost everything I owned, everything I worked for and sacrificed for, what then? I think it's a question every entrepreneur needs to ask themselves, and then be able to live with the answer. Because risk is everywhere. If I lost everything, what would be left? I'd still have my loving husband, and beautiful boys, and my good looks, so hey, we'd just do something else. Maybe we'd rent an old falling down barn somewhere, and lovingly bring it back to life. Maybe we'd home school and the kids and I will grow even closer. Maybe I'd create a garden and eat healthier than ever before. I couldn't see what our world would look like, but I could see that as long as I had my family, I couldn't really loose anything, because they were my everything. All else are simply details, and details can be re worked, new dreams dreamt. So, when I turned on the light, and looked under the bed, there was no monster after all.

Security?

These are scary times. The world is changing so fast, that we are all struggling to keep up. Every day there is a no way of doing something, and old things become obsolete and if you blink, you'll miss it. Business, especially retail, has been on a crazy roller coaster, unlike anything I've ever seen in my 15 years of doing business. And, it doesn't really seem possible to create a secure future. Anyone, anytime, could find themselves broke, out of business, obsolete, at any moment. I was watching Oprah last week and I saw good people who were loosing their homes, through no fault of their own. I talk to great people that we've worked with for years, who are closing their doors because they just can't make it, and I think, "why, how?" How can I prevent it from happening to me, and sadly, I realize I don't know those answers. I think the best we can all do, is the best we can do, in each and every moment. I get up every morning, have my coffee, talk to my husband. I wake my kids, make their breakfast, pack their lunch. I drop them off, and come to work, and I think, what will I give the world today? I put the best that I have to offer into the world (and admittedly, sometimes it's not that much), through our work. I try and always learn, grow and get better. I try to be the voice of love, and sometimes I'm successful and sometimes I'm not. I go home, sit with my family, and realize, this is it. This is security. It's not ensuring my business will grow and my bank accounts to, keeping me from the "streets". It's security in knowing that I do the best I can. I have love in my life, copious, luscious, waves of love. That's enough.

2010 ABC Spring Conference: Who and What We Love

Just got back from Louisville, KY for the 2010 Spring Conference for independent retailers in the baby and kids industry,and we had a blast. First of all, Louisville is a very charming city, clean, friendly and with a decidedly sophisticated edge. We loved the cool restaurants, and shops. The Museum Hotel was amazing, and was actually just written up in Conde Nast. Check it out, if you're going to Louisville. The show was small and exciting. We saw some of our wonderful store owners from around the country. We saw Debbie from Beautiful Beginnings in Chicago, who is doing great with the line. Spent some time with two of our favorite Left Coast Girls who own The Juvenile Shop in Sherman Oaks, California. If you're ever out there, stop in because the store is beautiful and the service is unparalleled. There was cool new products on the market that you may love. Little Castle has some really sophisticated new fabrics and chair designs. Renditions by Reesa has a new layette line, and some great new art. And, as always Nava thrilled and dazzled with silky new sensations in bedding. I think the new designs are better than ever, evolving with the times, and creating amazing new objects of desire. Sending you love from Louisville!.

How To Create A Functional Nursery

Setting up a nursery can be daunting, but it doesn’t have to be if you do a bit of planning. Think about what purpose the room will serve. Most certainly, it will be a sleeping space, but beyond that, what are your goals? Will this room serve as a play room as well? Will this room be shared with another sibling or nanny? Once you determine the uses for the space, you create a frame for the work to begin.

There are a plethora of options today for creating a nursery that will meet all of your needs and your unique vision of style. Almost all nurseries, at least double as a bedroom and playroom, and with dual functions comes twice the stuff. So, you need to consider plenty of storage options and pieces that can serve double duty. For example, choose a changing table that doubles as a dresser instead of two bulky pieces of furniture. A great armoire can hide a myriad of sins, including dirty clothes, entertainment centers, clothes, shoes, books, and toys. It’s a great piece that will grow with your child and serve you well in the years to come. There are wall units that can serve as a display case, book shelf, and art gallery. There are a ton of toy boxes, but for safety’s sake choose one with no lid, or a lid with safety hinges to avoid pinched fingers. Also consider baskets, which can go anywhere, even under the crib, and are easy for a toddler to tote around and access. If floor space is an issue, consider the variety of wall shelves available. Several in a row can create a floating book case, and a great set of bookends guarantees all your books will stay in place.

When setting up a nursery, it’s also important to be safety minded. Often toddlers spend time alone in their rooms, so creating a safe space is essential. Floor length curtains can be a strangulation hazard for crawling babies and toddlers, so opt for cordless blinds, shades, or shorter curtains. Floor lamps can be pulled over, so use ceiling lights and table lamps, and take care that the cord is out of baby’s reach. Also, make sure all of your outlets are plugged. For larger case goods, make sure you’ve tethered them to the wall to avoid tipping. Many manufacturers provide anti tipping straps for this exact purpose.

As your baby grows, you will want to add a play space, but take heart, doing so doesn’t have to cost a fortune or take up a ton of space. Pick a corner, and pitch a colorful tent, (which could just be your mom’s old bedspread hung from a hook in the ceiling), add some throw pillows and a sleeping bag, and voila, you’ve got magic. If your child is more into building and creating, put a small child’s table in the corner, and add a bookshelf, filled with tantalizing colors, books, toys and shapes. It’s important to rotate the offerings often to keep their interest. Your nursery should be safe, functional, and fun.

This room will grow and change right along with your baby. No sooner you get the crib up, and it becomes a toddler bed. Before you know it, that changing tray is removed and a potty chair appears. The walker is replaced by a tricycle, and on and on it goes. The key is to match the contents of the room with the needs of your child and make sure it remains a place where they feel at home, intellectually and artistically challenged, and entertained.

Go Green In The Nursery

The biggest change I've noticed in the world over the last five years, would be the world wide awakening that has happened as far as our responsibility to this earth, and how we can evoke positive changes. I have to say, that I am thrilled with this new state of being. I am a nature lover, most peaceful in the mountains, and being half Lumbee Indian, I always felt a special connection to the earth, the forest, the rivers, the air . . . So, naturally I've tried to incorporate respect for the earth in all areas of my life, including my business. And, as more and more demand for eco friendly products emerge, so do the resources to create them. That is one of the reasons I love business, it will make available what we demand, and if our consciousness turns toward more responsible behavior, business will be right there to meet that desire. So many people ask me how they can make a "green" nursery, and the good news is, there's more choices now than ever before. Here is a list of a few easy things you can do to make the environment for your child even greener.

10 Great Tips for Going Green in the Nursery:


1. Buy furniture that will grow with your child, ensure the quality and the design will last. By keeping your furniture longer, you are decreasing waste and furniture turnover that eventually ends up in our land fills.

2. If purchasing wood products, ensure the wood has come from sustainable forests. What this means is the trees used in the wood products are harvested and then replanted which ensures a replenishments of the worlds trees.

3. Don't be afraid of "engineered" wood such as MDF. MDF is an environmentally responsible choice for production. Engineered wood products make far more efficient use of the available resource today than ever before and can be manufactured from fast growing, underutilized, and less expensive wood species grown in privately managed forests. That helps safeguard older forests that as a society we have chosen to preserve. Byproducts from other production processes—small chips or unusable bits of wood—can be recycled and reused in engineered wood products. Engineered wood also eliminates many of the defects found naturally in wood, thereby improving upon many of the material's inherent structural advantages. Simply put, manufacturing wood is energy efficient.

4. Consider wrought iron as a medium for your furnishings. Wrought iron is sustainable, long lasting and renewable by nature.

5. Consider organic and natural materials for your textiles: crib bedding, rugs, curtains.

6. Use only organic and natural/non toxic cleaning products. Babies mouths end up everywhere!

7. Cut down on plastic. Plastic is a major contributor of indoor air pollution. When available choose furnishings, fixtures and toys with little or no plastic.

8. Ensure only non toxic paint and finishes enters the room, weather its on furnishings, toys, or walls, it all needs to be non toxic. *Also, make sure room is painted well before baby arrives and has been completely ventilated to ensure all fumes are gone. Give mom a day at the spa when the room is being painted, she doesn't need the fumes when pregnant.

9. If you have wall to wall carpet, consider getting rid of it and opting for bare floors, wood, bamboo or even cork. Dangerous toxins are often found in new and old carpet alike, and no matter how much you clean your carpet, it can still be highly toxic and filled with germs.

10. Less is more. There's a tendency to fill up that nursery long before the baby arrives. Be conservative and thoughtful in your purchases cutting down on over consumption and waste.

Reality Bites

From that moment on, we knew we were really in business. It wasn't just an idea floating around in our heads, it was real and taking up all the space my living room (I never realized how big 10 wrought iron cribs are). At one point in my pre Bratt career, I had a small marketing firm. I knew how to stage and sell a product, be it with words, photos or events. All of my clients were artists of one sort or another, so I felt confident I could sell this crib, because it was, after all, a work of art. The first thing I needed to do was take a decent photo. Second thing, find my market. Third thing, present the goods, and money would flow like the mighty Mississippi. So, I took a great photo. I bought a very expensive list consisting of affluent pregnant women in their second trimester and interior designers who had done high end nurseries in the past. Again, pre internet, so everything had to be snail mailed. Now, at this point, we were young parents with a fairly new mortgage, making ends meet, but not a lot more. Both Stephen and I had managed to save a little money, and we decided this was a good investment, so we blew almost our entire nest egg on the photography, printing, procurement of the list, and the mailing. We bought 10,000 names, and I personally addressed and mailed 10,000 postcards. The cribs cost us about $1000 each when it was all said and done, so we decided we sell them for $2000. If we only got 1% of our list (which is what statistics say you can count on), we'd make $100,000. Not bad. Not bad at all. And, after seeing the competition we felt sure we'd make that, and if not, at least we'd sell a few and make our money back and have enough to try again. We were so excited as we sent out those little postcards of promise. I remember eagerly sitting by the phone, imagining what our very first client would look like. How excited they'd be when they saw what we had done for them. How thankful they'd be when their ideal dream crib just showed up in the mail. And, I waited. Around the bottom of the first week, I remember feeling my first pang of what if .. . . But, ever the optimist, I was sure they were just deliberating. After all, one doesn't just plunk down 2G's without a bit of consideration, a purchase of that requires some thought. And, so I waited with a bit more understanding about the time, because of the magnitude of the decision my soon to be customers were faced with. And, I waited some more. I think it was week 3 when I began to realize we not become the overnight success I had envisioned. In the end, we never received one single phone call. Not one! I still can't believe that.

And Baby Makes Three

We were so sure that our idea for a hip little designer baby furniture company was destined for billion dollar success, that we became paranoid that, should anyone find out, they would surely steal our idea. To protect the concept, we nicknamed the idea “The Cat”. We discussed “The Cat” all the way on the train.

The next few weeks every conversation included “The Cat”. We would lie in bed at night, with Stephen drawing and me adding my two cents. We came up with the name, "Bratt Decor" because Stephen, being South African, loved the American cheekiness of the word Brat (we added the extra "t" to soften the effect) and Decor, because we felt it added a bit of range. All in all it's proven to be a great name. People remember it. It's sort of sassy with a dash of elegance. We incorporated our business, copyrighted our name, and were ready to make our millions. Stephen did all of his homework with the Consumer Safety Products Commission, and made sure that the design was safe, so that limited our artistic freedom, to some extent. Once we knew our boundaries, we were off. We decided that the crib had to reflect our tastes and truly be a work of art that we both loved. I had some requirements. I wanted my beloved French wrought iron to be the medium, because Paris was still in my soul. I wanted to be taken back to the windy French streets where iron balconies reached the sky of the fanciest of facades, where four-poster iron beds graced huge, marbled rooms and where even the signposts for the metro were curly wrought iron and totally gorgeous. So, with that, we had a beginning, a four poster wrought iron crib. Stephen had to put some Africa in there, so he decided that the top of those four posters would be a perfect place to incorporate the exotic wilds of Africa. He called his father, who drove for miles to an ostrich farm in the Karoo and hand selected a beautiful display of white ostrich plumes. Once they arrived, he carefully inserted them into these beautiful hand turned wooden finials that he finished with linseed oil, and then wrapped with leather. They were stunning. He kept the design fairly simple so the feathers could sing. The wrought iron was slate gray with simple scrollwork along the bottom and finished with brass balls on the feet. He also insisted the bedding be stark white with a bit of movement, to counterbalance the lines of the crib, so he designed and sewed a beautiful white wave bumper. The look was completed with a bed skirt. It was the most beautiful sight. I felt sure that this was a winner, and that the entire world would definitely want this crib. I was so caught up in the loveliness of the object that I didn’t really think too much of the logistics of how actually turning that crib into a business would really play out. Because, let’s face it, Stephen couldn’t put this much time into every single crib, there would be manufacturing to consider, inventorying, procurement, government regulations and that was just the start. However, there would be plenty of time to think on those things. This was the time to focus on my husband, my nursery and my growing baby.

We had so much fun putting that room together. Stephen painted a romantic blue sky on the ceiling, and then went into the attic and drilled tiny holes throughout which he filled with soft, twinkling Christmas lights. The affect was pure magic, Paris at twilight. We placed the crib in the center of the room on a large sheep skin rug, and as far as I was concerned, we were done. However, that wasn’t entirely practical. We had an old walnut dresser refinished, and filled an antique book case with Curious George, Dr. Seuss, and Goodnight Gorilla. I put my mother’s old, armless, spindle rocker in the corner and recovered the seat cushion in white. We purchased a beautiful yellow animal mask from a street vendor on our last trip to Africa, and we hung that on his wall, then we were complete. The room was simple and dazzling.

In June of that year, Sebastian was born, and like every first time parent, we were all consumed with wonder over every single thing about our magnificent baby. We would put him in the bed between us, and gaze endlessly at the rise and fall of his little chest while he slept. A heavy sigh or sudden startle would fill us with joy indescribable. You know how it is. Those first few weeks you're walking in the midst of a miracle, and your mind really can't catch up with what your heart and your soul know in it's deepest most eternal secret places.

Needless to say, not much happened with Bratt Decor for the first few months following Sebastian's birth. We were just settling in, experiencing all the changes a baby brings to one's life. Stephen's illustration business was very successful, and he worked from home. So, the three of us had what I referred to as our Camelot year. It was the most perfect year. Money was not a worry. The baby was a constant source of joy and pride. Stephen worked, but not too much. I didn't really work at all. I don't recall one fight, not one moment of stress. Honestly, I was so grateful that God would see fit to give me so much love, I don't think I could have mustered an unkind word to anyone, let alone the two loves of my life. We had so much time together, and Stephen didn't miss one of all those amazing "firsts" of a new baby. I was still planning on making Bratt Decor a real business, but had no idea when or how that would happen. Until our fist day at Gymboree. Sebastian was six months old, and we decided to join a mommy and me gymnastics class. On the first day, all the proud mommies were sitting in a circle with their little fat cherubs, and the instructor asked us to go around the circle, introduce ourselves and our babies, and tell a little bit about who we were. There were doctors, lawyers, school teachers, stay at home moms, and just about every thing in between. When my time came, after introducing myself and Sebastian, I told the group how I was planning on creating a crib company, and producing wrought iron cribs. But, that I really wasn't sure how all of that was going to happen (this was before the internet), because I hadn't figured out manufacturing. We made the prototype locally, but the costs were prohibitive. Just the four sides of the crib cost us $800, and that was in the mid 90's. So, we knew we'd have to make the product somewhere besides the U.S. if we ever wanted to actually sell any. And, then, from the other side of the circle, this cute little mommy piped up and said, "Well, one of my best girlfriends, who was my maid of honor and who is little Isabell's godmother, represents iron manufacturers in South America. I bet she could help you find someone to produce your designs." As it turned out, she did. We worked with a small foundry in Nicaragua who was run by two sisters. They produced our designs for several years, and it was one of the most extraordinary coincidences I've had in this business. I mean, really, what are the chances? If you don't believe in God, start your own company, and soon you will.

That's when Bratt Decor actually started to take shape. Stephen worked with them, faxing our specifications, and working only over the phone and fax. In all the years we worked together, we never once met them. When our first cribs arrived, wrapped in Tide boxes and flown in, it was like Christmas morning. It's one thing to make yourself something that you love, it's quite another to communicate something you've dreamt of and imagined to people thousands of miles away, and then see it all come to life in your living room. When we assembled it and saw that it was good, I wept.