Wee Rascals is a local family affair
When Debbie Schriver’s Whitby-based daughter couldn’t find receiving blankets large enough for her growing twins, the Brighton tailor quickly came to the rescue.
“The receiving blankets you buy in the store are all small,” she explained. “When babies grow, they can wriggle out of them so I made some extra large ones to grow with them.”
The blankets proved to be heaven-sent for daughter, Rebecca Crawford, whose new twins enjoyed being swaddled.
“I always swaddled them and they loved it, when Mom made me the extra-large receiving blankets I used them for everything.”
Those receiving blankets led the pair to create www.weerascals.ca, where other mothers searching for hard-to-find sizes or products can purchase hand-made custom products in a range of different fabrics from organic cotton to fleece.
“A lot of baby stuff is poorly made,” Ms. Crawford explained of what sets their new venture apart.
“All of our textiles are from Canadian companies and our products are hand-sewn in Canada by my mother. Our prices might be a little higher than something you’d buy at Wal-Mart, but I think the quality is there and people seem willing to pay for that.”
Ms. Crawford and Ms. Schriver began their online business in September, selling receiving blankets and sleep sacks online. Since then they’ve also introduced crib sheets, stay-put bibs and security blankets, with plans to introduce new products once a month.
“We always wanted to do something together but we never really had an idea,” Ms. Crawford said of Wee Rascals, which came together very quickly during her maternity leave.
“I think I’m most surprised because I thought I was just going to chill out on my maternity leave, but instead I’ve been so busy,” said the software developer, who leaned on her background in IT to create the website.
“It’s been really fun so far, I can’t believe how much I’ve learned during my maternity leave. For my mom, she’s always been a tailor so she’s still using her same skills, but it’s something different.”
Ms. Schriver currently does all the sewing, but hopes to hire more help in the future. So far though, her work has been getting excellent reviews.
“We’ve gotten excellent feedback from product reviews done by a few different companies,” she said. “They said that the quality of work was excellent, so we’ve been really pleased with that so far.”
In addition to extra-large receiving blankets and sleep sacks, customers can also custom-order products based on individual measurements and all products can be monogrammed.
The pair are now working on increasing awareness of the site to help drive sales and are already busy planning new products.
“We’re sort of still waiting for the fruits of our labour,” Ms. Crawford explained. “But I’m surprised at how much we’ve gotten done in such a short time and I’m looking at things like trade shows, which will hopefully put us in front of our audience of mothers and expectant mothers.”
New items such as hats and mittens, children’s pyjamas and even children’s summer clothing will be available on the site in the future.
Ms. Crawford and Ms. Schriver have big plans for 2010 with the introduction of additional options when ordering, like extra long side-opening zippers, foot holes and sleeves, and bottom-opening zippers, PLUS a new designer sleep sack and blanket line for the spring!
For more information or to purchase products visit www.weerascals.ca.
This article was originally published in the Whitby This Week newspaper and written by Moya Dillon. Photo taken by Ron Petroniro.