BRUNSWICK, Maine — Seabren and Whitney Reeves have spent the past four years becoming experts in children’s products, securing a patent for a breathable crib bumper with their business, Bitzy Baby, still based out of their home.
But in recent weeks, they’ve turned their attention to other industries, sizing up the 14 other companies in the running for $30,000 in cash prizes in a national contest next week.
“We do have to know the other companies, what makes them different and what can we focus on that makes us different,” Whitney Reeves said.
The couple will travel to Washington, D.C., next week and make their pitch why their company should win a $15,000 first-place prize as part of the U.S. Small Business Administration’s InnovateHER Business Challenge, intended for companies “who created a product or service that will have a measurable impact on women and their families, fills a need in the marketplace and has the potential for commercialization,” according to the SBA.
The Reeves’ company and 14 others were picked from a group of 75 semi-finalists.
Whitney Reeves said the company’s participation in developing technical standards for baby bedding through a subcommittee of international standard-setting body ASTM is one point of distinction and company expertise. Their design, for which they received a patent in 2013, is an example of that.
The company sells a baby bumper the couple say protects infants from injury by hitting the hard edges of a crib while avoiding suffocation hazards that can come with denser crib padding. It retails for $119.
The idea emerged when they, as new parents, were searching for crib padding options. They have two sons.
A report in February from the Maine Attorney General’s Office found 10 to 15 babies die each year in Maine from suffocating while sleeping, including when sleeping in a bed with parents. A 2014 study from the American Academy of Pediatrics concluded babies who sleep in a crib or bassinet is safest.
The attention to that issue and stricter standards on crib bumpers in other countries, such as Australia, have opened the market for Bitzy Baby.
“We’re getting orders from all over the U.S.,” Seabren Reeves said. “We don’t have a lot of resources for PR and marketing. A lot of it is social media awareness and people finding us because they’re looking for a safer alternative.”
After years developing the product, the couple sent out the first deliveries of their Bitzy Bumper to early crowdfunding supporters late last year and in December put them for sale online at their own website and Amazon.
While the couple will appeal to a national audience in their pitch May 8, they said they intend to reveal plans that could have an impact back in their hometown.
Seabren Reeves said the couple intends in their pitch to lay out plans for 2015, which they expect to include a second manufacturing run of their product and settling into permanent office space in Brunswick, possibly at the startup incubator TechPlace that recently opened at Brunswick Landing, the former air base.
“That is something that we’re looking at because of the proximity to Brunswick,” Seabren Reeves said.
Eventually, the company hopes to move manufacturing of the product from China to the United States.
“We want to have it 100 percent made in Maine in the future, and we’re looking to do that with recycled plastics and manufacturing here,” Seabren Reeves said. “We’re still bootstrapping it, and part of that is really being judicious about how we spend our resources.”
Whether the contest brings an actual cash prize or not — $15,000, $10,000 or $5,000 for the top three spots, provided by Microsoft — they said the attention and endorsement from the SBA could provide promising leads.
“It’s such a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to be on this kind of national stage,” Seabren Reeves said.