As we approach our one year anniversary, Gannon and I can't help but be filled with joy and excitement for the year we're leaving behind and all that's ahead of us for 2022.
In February of 2021 we launched Kinder Cloth Diaper Co. from our spare bedroom with just five pocket diapers and no idea what we were doing. Things were slow going in the beginning, and in May we joined TikTok and our community has been exploding ever since.
Over the course of the year, we created 63 unique diaper prints and solids. We evolved our pocket diaper, adding athletic wicking jersey, reinforced PUL on the tabs, and eventually — changing the sizing all together to be more inclusive and last longer for families.
We exceeded our self projected sales goals by ten fold. (I still can't believe that actually happened). And grew our Discord group to be more than 150 members.
Our product line up grew too. We now carry Pockets and Covers as well as three styles of inserts. (Soon to be four.) As well as cloth diaper accessories like wet bags, pods, change mats and more.
We hit a few snags along the way, as any new business is bound to do. Our Adventure Collection lived up to it's name and gave us a run for our money. We had to make some changes to both our quality check process as well as our pre-order model. And in the fall, we officially stopped running pre-orders for new collections in order to improve our overall product quality.
In 2021, we teamed up with artists for two successful collaboration series. The first with Portland based joy creator Mike Bennett Art and the second with Pennsylvania graphic designer Deb Hartranft. I love being able to offer our customers different art styles by teaming up with artists and creators.
To close out the year, we were able to donate 100 pocket diaper with inserts and 20 wet bags to our local diaper bank, The Western Pennsylvania Diaper Bank, here in Pittsburgh. We hope to be able to more than double that number next year.
Thank you for an incredible first year in business. We have so much planned for this second year already! We hope that you'll join us as we continue to grow and evolve Kinder.
