Hi everyone! Since weve been trying to do more Spray Pal giveaways in 2014, weve been adding a bunch of new fans over here and I figured it might be time to introduce ourselves. Forgive me if this gets long...Im not known for my brevity. ;) Im Jen, and Im the mom behind the Spray Pal. My husband and I invented this cloth diapering accessory back in 2011 when our oldest daughter (affectionately referred to as Mini Spray Pal 1.0) turned 6 months and started exploring solid foods. We had been using #clothdiapers for a few months and had become accustomed to the easy EBF diapers that we could just throw in the wash. We got ourselves a sprayer to help make clean up easier to deal with, but we found that we were creating a new mess when we sprayed because we just couldnt get the technique down without splattering dirty water all over the bathroom wall and floor. So, my husband, who is known for being very McGyver-ish, started playing around with ideas for a shield. We went through numerous prototypes made from various materials we found in our home until we made the perfect solution. It was big enough to allow our hands to get down in there with the sprayer, but it folded flat to allow for easy storage in our small bathroom. We shared our idea with a few of our cloth diapering friends, and every one of them said, Oh my gosh, thats genius. You need to sell it! Thats the very short (ha!) version of how a couple of elementary school teachers came up with an idea, applied for a patent, and started making and selling a product to help other cloth diapering parents out. Theres SO much more to this story...like finding a local shop to help us make them, packing and shipping daily from our garage, learning the ins and outs of social media and even starting up a hashtag thats actually catching on (#makeclothmainstream), and that one time we were kicking butt in the intuit super bowl commercial contest and stayed in the top 10 most popular for 2 rounds out of 15,000 small businesses! Oh, and of course theres the part where our son (Mini Spray Pal 2.0) was born prematurely at 25 weeks only 7 months after we launched Spray Pal, and how we are so blessed that all of our proceeds can go toward supporting his medical needs with the ultimate goal of allowing me to stay home with him and not have to teach anymore (as much as Ill miss teaching, my kids need me more right now as we head into the world of cochlear implants and even more therapies). We have learned SO much in this journey of building a business from the ground up, and we are so grateful to all of YOU who have been here supporting us from the get-go. Our interactions with this cloth diapering community, both on social media and in person, have been priceless to us. So, thank you to all of our old friends, and WELCOME to all of our new friends! Were glad youre here. Ill keep this pinned to the top as we add more fans, and Ill include links in the comments to any of the current #spraypal giveaways so you will have easy access to enter.
Posted on: Mon, 03 Feb 2014 19:22:58 +0000