November 4, 2010
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Heather Epps
Motherhood is in and of itself an entrepreneurial enterprise, so its no surprise to see more and more moms launching small businesses. Moms run their homes and tend to their families much like a small business, ensuring operations run smoothly and everyone is happy and profitable, with success being the ultimate goal. It’s not too much of a leap, then, to see why increasing numbers of innovative mothers are deciding to helm startups in the business world, backed by 24/7 training from running their home empires.
After searching the current marketplace and coming up fruitless when it comes to finding certain green baby supplies, many moms are pairing their need for a product by becoming the founder of a company that provides it, knowing that other parents are most likely experiencing the same gap in the marketplace and are searching for the same things.
One such mom-on-a-mission is gDiapers co-founder Kimberley Graham Nye, who admits, “Taking on a start-up company while raising two kids is definitely an adventure!” She ventured into the earth-friendly flushable diaper business, seeking a solution to the staggering statistic that “every day in the U.S., 50 million waste-filled diapers go into the landfill where they sit for up to 500 years.”
While Graham Nye didn’t invent the concept behind the flushable, hybrid gDiapers, she and her husband brought them to the United States after discovering them under the Australian brand Baby Weenee Eco Nappy. gDiapers are the first flushable, compostable diapers to hit the marketplace, pairing the convenience of disposable diapers with the sustainability of cloth diapers. She told the Portland Tribune, “It was the answer to all our prayers. Water use is an issue [in Australia], so to be able to flush and compost was fabulous… we’re a completely new and different product. GDiapers is radically better for the environment than anything else on the market.”
The couple strategically chose North America as the country to launch gDiapers due to the plethora of “natural grocery chains and big distributors.” And they honed in on Portland, Oregon as their home due to its reputation and ranking as the greenest city in America.
Graham Nye shed light on her desire to redefine diapers in a recent interview with eco baby website Inhabitots saying, “When I was pregnant with our oldest son Fynn, my husband Jason and I began researching eco-friendly diaper options. We were surprised that there were still only two options — cloth and disposable. And then we found a third option. It consisted of a reusable diaper cover that could be used with either cloth inserts or fully biodegradable inserts. It seemed to Jason and I to be Australia’s best-kept secret! If we, as parents, were wondering why there wasn’t a better choice for diapering, we were confident that the rest of the world would want to know about this too. It was a secret that just had to be told. So we negotiated the rights, created a brand, raised some seed money, and brought the concept to the U.S.”
In addition to preserving the planet with her business, Graham Nye also helps preserve the family dynamic by making on-site daycare available to gDiapers employees, encouraging her staff to bring their children to work, and thus further re-inventing the concept of work/home life for parents. She explains:
“If there’s one thing we understand, as parents ourselves, it’s that kids’ needs don’t fit within the constraints of a typical nine to five workday. We strongly believe that work and family can go together better. That there shouldn’t be such a firm line between work and “life.” We’ve found that by creating a flexible work-life balance and offering on-site childcare, we’ve been able to attract and retain really valuable employees. That retention is really important in a fast-paced, fast-growing environment.”
As the Graham Nye’s continue to reinvent the diapering industry and re-structure the workplace to accommodate families, the gDiapers brand continues to evolve, with new products including apparel and accessories, and biodegradable baby wipes being added to the company’s line-up.
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Heather Epps 1 year 6 months and 18 days ago
What an amazing product!! I had no idea that something like this existed. Graham Nye is an inspiration to us all!