Help save the Gulf Coast wildlife! Donate your cloth diapers and inserts!

As a Florida resident, the Gulf Oil Spill is on our minds daily. Summertime here is beach season and every time we are able to go to our beautiful beaches we are reminded that others on the Gulf Coast, like Louisiana and Florida's panhandle are not so lucky, who knows when they'll ever get to enjoy their coastline again.

You may not know this but cloth diaper manufacturer FuzziBunz is located in Louisiana and has found a way that the cloth diapering community can help with this horrific disaster.

Tereson has started "Cloth for the Coast." After much research and cutting through red tape she has found that donations of new or used inserts, prefolds and other cloth diapers can be used to assist in the cleanup and in rehabilitating the affected wildlife.

While we may all feel helpless to stop this terrible oil spill from continuing to affect our coastlines and wildlife I think that it is awesome that there IS something we can do to help.

Please become a FAN of Cloth for the Coast on FaceBook and send your donations to

FuzziBunz Diapers
Attn: CFC
315 Weeks St
New Iberia, LA 70560

Items that you can send are; microfiber towels, absorbent inserts, pocket diaper inserts of any kind, washcloths, burpcloths, baby blankets and more.

It is preferred that items be free of snaps, elastic and velcro but if needed volunteers will be able to sort the donated items and will be donating the items that can not be used in the cleanup efforts to charity.

This is our chance to help make a difference! Let's show the coast just how awesome the cloth diapering community is!

Want brighter colors or prints? Wondering why more pastels? Read this!

Hi everyone.

Wow, what a day we had yesterday. It was amazing to watch the visitor count on the website climb (hours before the video posted to YouTube), sad to watch the server melt under the load and thrilling to watch the order count climb as retailers and customers ordered tens of thousands of diapers yesterday. A truly jaw dropping day from my vantage point. I had no idea that our users could respond in such a strong way in such a short period of time. You are amazing and the combined power of the cloth diapering community is nothing short of phenomenal!

YouTube updated the view count on the announcement video last night.  As of right now, they say that the video has over 8000 views. The Cotton Babies YouTube channel (a mere two days old) has nearly 1000 subscribers. The blog subscribers have doubled, Cotton Babies Facebook fans have doubled and bumGenius Facebook fans have climbed to well over 10,000 (30% of those have been added in the last ten days or so). I'm in awe of the response we've had. Thank you so much for believing in the product line!

After processing through some of the feedback we have received about the new diapers, I thought it was important that you hear from me about what is going on with the 4.0s and why we made the changes that we did.

First, let's take a look at what's new in the 4.0.

1. Updated hook & loop
2. Easy elastic access. Now refreshing your elastic can be accomplished easily even if you have no sewing knowledge!
3. Larger sizing... we have always fit average sized babies up to 35 pounds in the 3.0s... but if your baby was chunky, it was quite likely that our diapers weren't going to fit. Now they will.
4. Your choice of closures.  Some people like snaps.  Some people like hook & loop.  We thought you deserved a choice.

The 4.0s are a release that focused on functionality and addressed repeated requests from a multitude of customers. If you go back and read through customer threads on Diaper Swappers or other forums, they repeatedly bring up complaints related to these three things. Addressing these issues was a major undertaking and I'm quite relieved to have that behind us!

With the 4.0 release, we also added three new colors to the bumGenius color family - Sweet, Bubble and Noodle. We chose these colors because many customers who purchase bumGenius are first-time parents looking for colors that will fit into their newborn's wardrobe. We've heard from these parents that they wanted cute, coordinating light colors that would be discreet under their baby's clothing. We're trying to take care of all of our customers. The new pastel colors address requests from that group of people.  These colors will be available in all of our products soon.  We'll start shipping them in the bumGenius Elemental diapers in a few weeks.  The bumGenius AIOs and Flip will be close behind.

Now that the functionality changes are behind us, we get to focus on the really fun things - like other colors and *prints*!  I'm happy to confirm that both of these things are in progress. We've taken a beautiful, adventurous and high end approach to our new print designs. We've also been investigating some new mediums and ways to apply color to fabric. I have diaper samples right here in my office - my daughter has actually been wash testing and wearing the first version of those samples since last winter. We approved samples a few weeks ago and fabric is actually in production now. As soon as I have a ship date on the real diapers, we'll be pushing that information out to you and to our retailers.

Also, many of you are asking for the return of the bumGenius brights. Like the prints, this has been on ongoing project since we saw the public outcry after they were discontinued. Our production process is large and it involves a number of components so it takes some time to get that machine moving again. We are looking forward to being able to bring those to you soon!

I have mentioned most of this information in various ways on forums and on Facebook in the last twenty-four hours, but wanted to write a blog post so the information was a little more sticky!

I hope you're as excited as I am about the fun things that are up ahead for bumGenius and for the cloth diapering industry. I believe that major things are up ahead for our industry... but that is a post for another time and another day. We have some orders to ship!

Have a great weekend everyone!

Kindest regards,


Jenn

bumGenius 4.0 - Hook & Loop Details (UPDATED!)

We've received many questions today about what exactly what we changed about the hook & loop.

Our new hook & loop is made out of 100% polyester (the vast majority of hook & loop available in the United States is made of nylon).  It is flexible, softer, and stickier after washing.  I absolutely love it!

The photo to the right is a picture of the old laundry tabs and the new laundry tabs.  These stay soft and flexible over time while retaining their stickiness.

(sidenote:  in this photo you can also see the start/stop of the top stitching just above the laundry tab to accommodate for elastic accessibility.  Many families want to be able to use their diapers for another child.  This change makes it easy for those families to refresh their diapers for another baby if needed. )

In the photo below, the twilight diaper is a new bumGenius 4.0 and the ribbit diaper is a bumGenius 3.0.   Both diapers are unwashed.

I am still at the office, but tomorrow I'll add a photo to add of a diaper with the new hook and loop that has been used and washed for six months so you can see how it has held up over time.

Update 6/30/2010:

I've taken some additional photos of the diapers that I have been testing at home... these have been in use for about six months.  As you can see, you can tell they have been washed, but they don't show any of the wear and tear that we were seeing on previous versions of the diaper.

bumGenius 4.0 One-Size Cloth Diapers are here!!

We are releasing an all new bumGenius 4.0 One-Size Cloth Diaper! The bg4 now accommodates even larger babies! The bg4 has all new hook & loop closures (also available in refresher kits) The bg4 has accessible, easily replaceable elastic.  All elastic tack-points are now visible from the inside of the diaper.  To replace elastic, turn the diaper inside out, thread new elastic through the casing and stitch it down at each end. Three new colors have joined our family - Bubble, Noodle and Sweet. You now have your choice of bumGenius closures (snaps or hook & loop). We will have product available for preorder at Cotton Babies right now. Please direct conversation and questions to our bumGenius Facebook page.  Cotton Babies staff will be monitoring the conversation to answer as many questions as we possibly can.  Have a great afternoon!

bumGenius Product Launch Details!!

Hi everyone!

We wanted to let you know that the new bumGenius product announcement will be tomorrow, June 29th at 2pm (Central Time) on the new Cotton Babies YouTube Channel. You are welcome to subscribe to the Cotton Babies YouTube Channel anytime!

The video announcement on YouTube will be followed with additional information by email to the Cotton Babies newsletter email list.  If you happen to know someone who isn't receiving our newsletter, please direct them to the link below so they can sign up:
http://visitor.constantcontact.com/d.jsp?m=1101140614310&p=oi

We will have product available for preorder at Cotton Babies at 2:15pm Central Time.

Please direct conversation and questions to our bumGenius Facebook page.  Cotton Babies staff will be monitoring the conversation to answer as many questions as we possibly can. 

Because of how long it is taking to upload things tonight, I am expecting to be up most of the night... so if you're up with me, let's chat!

Have a great evening everyone!

Kindest regards,


Jenn, Owner
Cotton Babies, Inc.