When I was a baby, custom crib bedding meant that your grandma handmade a quilt to go with a set of plastic bumper pads and a plain, white crib sheet. Thanks to my mother, times have changed.
Waaay back in the early seventies, my mother decided she needed to figure out a way to use her artistic talents and start a business of her own. She created a line of hand-painted barrettes and hair ribbons and sold them to some local stores. As demand grew, she incorporated more hand-painted items such as ceramic piggy banks and acrylic picture frames. Eventually, as her sales steadily increased, she designed a line of hand-appliqued baby bedding with coordinating accessories.
The next 20 years went by pretty quickly. Mom’s designs were found everywhere, from the fanciest department and specialty stores like Neiman Marcus and Bellini to the “big box” retailers like Babies R Us and Burlington Coat Factory. But times, they were ‘a changin...
Many of the children’s and baby bedding manufacturers started moving their plants to China, where labor was cheap in order to accommodate the pricing demands of larger retailers. And in the late nineties, the first few internet shopping sites started popping up. Mom decided it was time to rethink how she was doing business.
I started working in the “family business” around 1996, sewing on the line, making product samples, and attending fabric and industry trade shows. As my interest in the company grew, I agreed with mom that we needed a new way of reaching our customers. I had seen her design two dozen bedding sets for a new season’s line in a matter of days and knew that’s where her true passion lay–design. Not mass manufacturing, not dealing with indecisive store buyers, not endless SKUs.
We opened the Javis Davis design studio in the spring of 2000 in beautiful Fairhope, Alabama with the idea of selling custom bedding directly to the consumer. No stores to deal with, no huge price markups, no monotony of seeing the same patterns in the sewing line every single day. We soon realized we needed a way to reach a broader customer base and toyed with the idea of home sales– think Pampered Chef. This concept was successful, but had too many logistical issues to deal with.
Javis Davis.com was the next step. My stepdad built our first website and business hasn’t been the same since. We had a great time creating all of the Javis Davis Fabric Collections featured on the website. Mom would have twice as many if we’d let her! So now I’ve taken over website design, and my stepdad would love to retire...but we can’t let him go just yet.
We are so excited to introduce the Online Design Studio! Using Mom’s amazing mix-and-match skills, along with some very smart computer programmers, we have created a program where you can design your own crib set with a group of pre-coordinated fabrics and see it online before you place your order. Once again, mom proves to be a visionary in the world of baby bedding! |
