baby greens…diapers and more: a profile of ashley trotter
by sandi tomlin-sutker

I just love hearing about young women “minding their own business”. So I was pleased to meet the founder of this fascinating company and talk with her about her vision.

Ok, I’ll be a bit ageist here and reveal that Ashley is only 28 years old. She’s also a young mom (son Kai is just four years old) and wife (husband Mark is farm manager for the 200 acre property where they live in Swannanoa).

Plus, she is truly what I call an entrepreneur: in just over four years she’s gone from a company that she imagined would allow her to both work and stay home with Kai, to an international business with distributors in the UK and Australia, and about 100 retail accounts across the US and Canada.

A NATURAL PATH
Ashley’s background experience and education primed her for a business making wearables. She told me that her grandmother’s sewing machine was always out with one project or another in process, and when her mom got a new serger it was a big event. Ashley made her own costumes growing up and ended up at the University of South Carolina in the costume department.

She worked for a costume company through school and after moving to Asheville got a job as assistant fashion coordinator with the first Asheville hemp company. In that position she gained an appreciation of hemp fiber, especially its anti-bacterial, anti-microbial properties and the fact that it is not sprayed with pesticides. It is four times more absorbent than cotton alone and is incredibly strong and durable.

During that period she also became pregnant and the teacher of the birthing class she and Mark attended, Ellie Lee, had a business called Sunflower Babies that sold natural cotton diapers. Friends and family gave her those diapers as gifts and she loved them. When Kai grew out of those in a few months she decided to sew some new ones. She still had connections to hemp fabric manufacturers, so that fiber was a natural choice.

FROM KITCHEN TABLE TO FACTORY FLOOR
In the beginning, Ashley laid out the fabric on the kitchen table. She hoped, in those days, to sell 50 diapers per month. “At first, all the snaps were applied by hand, not an easy job! Now that’s all automated and fabric is cut by machine.” By February/March of 2006 she projects they will be selling 2,000 diapers per month.

Ashley went through Mountain Micro-enterprise Fund for general business help and a start-up loan of $2,500. Recent expansions she has financed out of revenues.

Until now, Baby Greens only manufactured and wholesaled their products. Their first retailers were Sunflower Babies and Little Sprouts, another Asheville based baby products company. In 2006 they will begin to sell at retail in the US and Canada on their new website: babygreensdiapers.com. They will continue to utilize their wholesale distributors in the UK and Australia/New Zealand.

Baby Greens has also added new, complimentary products. “We include cloth wipes now that can just be thrown into the wash along with the diapers. We created a cleanser, Cleansing Greens, for the baby, made with anti-bacterial essential oils and hemp oil—it’s closest to our own skin oils. And we’ve added a natural diaper soak and wash.”

Remembering my granddaughter’s cotton diapers and accessories, I wondered about covers to deal with the wetness. “There are several types available: wool which is naturally anti-bacterial, fleece, and the most popular, a soft knit with a breathable polyurethane laminate (PUL) to keep the wetness away from baby’s skin and clothing.” This year Ashley is developing a PUL diaper cover that will be made from recycled soda bottles.

THE ENVIRONMENTAL FOCUS
Developing that cover is integral to Baby Greens’ focus on healthy products, for the environment as well as the baby. “Cloth diapers are so much easier on the child’s skin. Some studies show that disposable diapers contribute to asthma because of the powdery substances used in them. There are also indications that males who use disposables have a lower sperm count.”

The website parentingweb.com lists several reasons why cloth is better for baby’s health, including that “the chemical used to make disposable diapers super absorbent, sodium polyacrylate, was removed from tampons in 1995 due to its link to toxic shock syndrome, and can cause allergic reactions.”

And there are the environmental costs: “It is estimated that around 5 million tons of untreated waste is deposited into landfills via disposables every year. The potential of ground water contamination is strong. It takes 82,000 pounds of plastic and over 250,000 trees a year to manufacture the disposable diapers for American babies alone.”

Of course, for the family there are also the financial costs to consider. Cloth diapers are expensive up front (time for that baby shower!): a set costs about $600 and will last at least two years. “Disposables will cost nearly that much each year, depending on how often you change the baby and the quality of diapers you buy.” Of course, if the environmental costs to the whole community were factored in, the price of disposables would be even higher. Baby Greens’ diapers are specifically designed to adjust and fit from newborn to 35 pounds, so it isn’t necessary to buy new ones as baby grows.

GROWING PAINS
One of the more difficult challenges of any business is how much to grow and in what directions. A few years back, Ashley faced just such a dilemma. Because Baby Greens was in the diaper manufacturing business, they began to get requests from other diaper companies to manufacture their products. Seeing this as a great opportunity to grow the business and create more jobs, Ashley added staff and machinery. “The contract business was profitable, but it was also hectic.”

Due to a series of seemingly unfortunate circumstances, Baby Greens quit the contract business, cutting staff from seven to the current three or four, including Ashley. She tells me, “We had no control over the fabrics, how the company’s workers were treated, where the fibers came from; there was no environmental orientation in that process. But it seemed too lucrative to give up, so what happened was really a blessing in disguise.”
“I’m much happier now that we’re not doing that…I thought I was happy during that six months, but I worked 15 hour days and was away from my family too much.” Luckily husband Mark had a very flexible schedule and was able to take care of Kai, but clearly creating that amount of stress was not Ashley’s goal when she started her company. “We’re back to the basics of Baby Greens and now we can do the retail part to increase our revenues within the original vision.”

That original vision included manufacturing a product made in the US. The fibers are milled in South Carolina, the yarn is spun in Tennessee and the fabric knitted in Hickory. Only the hemp fibers themselves are not grown domestically since the US bans the growing of hemp because of its close relationship to the marijuana plant. Both plants are varieties of Cannabis sativa, but only marijuana has the properties that create a high when smoked or ingested. However, fears that growing hemp would lead to de-facto legalization of marijuana have kept this plant out of US fields. (Although I remember in the late 1970’s at the Agriculture Extension Experimental Farm outside Savannah, Georgia that hemp was being grown—and stolen out of the fields by ignorant, or perhaps deceptive, drug dealers.)
Even though Baby Greens obtains their hemp fibers from China, Ashley is careful to work with companies that “focus on bridging the gap between workers and owners. We work with smaller farms; the growers get a fair wage. And we only use organically grown cotton in our blend.” The company also practices what it preaches, donating leftover fabrics to make quilts for cancer patients, recycling shipping boxes, using soy inks and many other sustainable practices.

Ashley believes her success so far is due to people’s growing desire to use environmentally friendly and healthy products, provide fair wages to workers and support domestic manufacturing.

I think she’s right.