Snug Organics: Keeping Babies Safe from Chemicals

When Erin had her first child, she dis­cov­ered one of the major con­trib­u­tors to many of these con­di­tions. “After I had my first son, I was look­ing for paja­mas for him for the win­ter and, liv­ing in Colorado, he needed some­thing warm. All that I really found were the fleece blan­ket sleep­ers. I’m a per­son who does way too much research on every sin­gle thing I buy. I was look­ing online and started see­ing infor­ma­tion about flame retar­dants, and how those are required to be on polyester-fleece sleepwear.

“Flame retar­dants have been linked to many of the child­hood epidemics—ADHD, obe­sity, learn­ing dis­abil­i­ties, a large num­ber of hor­monal issues, and even can­cer. I saw a lot of these in my class­room as a teacher, so I def­i­nitely took notice. It’s scary to think that all of those chem­i­cals are more con­cen­trated in chil­dren, because they’re so much smaller than we are and their bod­ies can’t get rid of that toxic bur­den like ours can.

“For my own child, I started look­ing for a sleeper made of nat­ural fiber and pos­si­bly some­thing organic that would really keep him warm, and there was noth­ing out there. So I decided to have one made.”

Shortly after this, Erin resolved to share the fruits of her labors with oth­ers and cre­ated Snug Organics. “We started very slowly and just took baby steps,” Erin said. “I found a fam­ily that sews in the Denver area and ordered my fab­rics within the US, and I just began with small batches of sleep­ers. My hus­band hap­pens to be a graphic designer, so he was able to do the brand­ing and the web­site. We’re now in our third year. I’ve been work­ing on it for four years and we’ve been up and run­ning for three.”

Erik had no prob­lem in sup­port­ing his wife in her endeavor. “Erin is one of the most dri­ven peo­ple I know and pours her quiet strength into every aspect of Snug Organics,” he said.

In addi­tion to flame retar­dants, Erin’s sleep­wear solves a num­ber of issues inher­ent in mass-market prod­ucts. “Our sleep­ers are made of organic cot­ton sherpa, which is a beau­ti­ful fleecy cot­ton fab­ric,” Erin explained. “It’s sim­i­lar to poly­ester fleece but it breathes, where poly­ester actu­ally keeps heat inside. Polyester can cause kids to over­heat and get sweaty.

“Another issue for me was that the Academy of Pediatrics rec­om­mends no blan­kets or pil­lows inside cribs due to SIDs—infants can suf­fo­cate on them. I kept think­ing, ‘How am I sup­posed to keep them warm with­out being able to put any­thing in there?’ So what­ever my son was wear­ing needed to be really warm or he was going to be wak­ing up, and wak­ing me up, all night long. Other organic sleep­wear that was on the mar­ket was thin ribbed cot­ton, and it’s just not warm enough. So we offer some­thing that is warm enough and is still natural.”

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As her com­pany has grown and demand for her prod­ucts has increased, Erin has man­aged to keep up with the demand—again, some­thing not so eas­ily done. “We went with merino wool a cou­ple of sea­sons ago, and it was very hard to source. That’s actu­ally true of any fab­ric that isn’t cov­ered in chem­i­cals. Wool is one that, if you don’t get it organic, has a lot of fin­ish­ing chem­i­cals in it.”

But con­cerned par­ents obvi­ously want what Snug Organics has to offer. Based on client needs, they will soon be adding another prod­uct line. “Next month we’ll be offer­ing a 100 per­cent alpaca sleeper,” said Erin. “We have sold wool in the past and cus­tomers are request­ing it again. Alpaca is quite sim­i­lar to cash­mere and it helps reg­u­late body tem­per­a­ture, so it’s an excel­lent option for kids. I found alpaca in Peru, and it isn’t cer­ti­fied organic but it’s raised com­pletely with­out chemicals.”

As Snug Organics con­tin­ues to grow, Erin has many great plans. “I would like to be bet­ter able to keep up with demand, so I need to find a larger man­u­fac­turer for our sherpa sleep­ers,” Erin con­cluded. “That’s been our only challenge—running out of them and not being able to make them fast enough. I also want to add other sleep­wear prod­ucts to our line; I’d like to do some sum­mer sleep­wear and some organic long johns that can go under the alpaca. Then, who knows, maybe some bedding!”

For more infor­ma­tion on Snug Organics and their prod­ucts, visit www.snugorganics.com.