Since our start as a small family company in 2007, we’ve been lucky to experience tremendous growth and nowhere has this been more apparent than in the last year, with tons of new product launches! We thought we’d take a moment to tell you the stories behind each of our products, starting with our popular new Boba Carrier Stuff Sack. Last year, after the big launch of our Boba Carrier 3G, we were finally able to prioritize product development for something our baby carrier customers have been asking for from us for a long time - a carrying sack for their carriers. People told us of all the creative ways they were storing their carriers, but that they wanted something that was really easy to use and that matched their Boba Carrier print. So, in 2011 we went to work on it. We decided that a very basic, economical fabric carrying bag would be best, like those we use for our sleeping bags. When we looked around for examples of this classic “stuff sack” (a term popularized by the sleeping bag industry; “stuff” being a verb, mind you), we found a lot of standard examples with the drawstring on one end and handle on the other - the same orientation you’ll now find on the Boba Carrier Stuff Sack. We were excited that our search also led us to a working mother with a popular baby carrier accessories shop on Etsy.com selling her version of the classic stuff sack, made especially for soft-structured baby carriers like the Boba 3G. Charlotte Kaufman runs the Etsy shop Red Charlotte where she sells a variety of pretty and functional custom fabric pieces including stuff sacks (she was the first to gear a stuff sack towards baby carriers), teething pads, and more. Unfortunately, after much conversation and earnest wishes to work with another mom-led company, and after running the math of sizeable production and distribution needs, we weren’t able to source our stuff sacks from Charlotte due to volume and pricing obligations. However, her experience and devotion to babywearing, and her strong support of carrier companies continues to be an inspiration to us! In fact, we’re featuring her in our upcoming Babywearing All-Stars series where we pay homage to the people, companies and places that have inspired a growing movement in regions where babywearing had long been forgotten as the best way to move through the world with baby (in the meantime, check out Red Charlotte on Etsy - we know you’ll love it and we'd love to show her our appreciation with the traffic to her store). Well, after several rounds of designing and redesigning our would-be baby carrier stuff sack, reviewing seven different prototypes and then sourcing production, the Boba Carrier Stuff Sack finally arrived to market this month and wow, were we surprised at the response! Though we knew the people who had been asking for them for so long would probably jump at the chance to get them, we had no idea how fast they would sell out (most of them went in one day!). As of this blog post, we’re waiting for our next shipment to meet back-orders and have even re-worked our production schedule to help prevent these kinds of sell-outs in the future. All in all, new products like the stuff sack offer us a world of opportunity to experience the excitement of our customers, hone our abilities to answer requests and meet new needs, and grow as a family and business. We continue to thank all our Boba fans for their love and use of our products. We can’t wait to include you in our next new product launch (hint, hint: there's a big one right around the corner)!