LINDA BYERLINE, CEO of Happy Heinys
February 4, 2008
As founder and CEO of Happy Heinys/MLB Industries Inc., Linda Byerline began creating diapers from home in 2002. Prior to founding her company, she worked as a nurse, helping quadriplegics come home from the hospital. Here, bizSanDiego conducts a first hand interview with Linda.
bizSD:Did you always want to start your own company or did you just stumble upon an idea that was too good to pass up?
Byerline: I had a daughter that was born prematurely and it was recommended to switch her to cloth diapers. I couldn’t find cloth diapers that would fit her so I just made some. Eventually I threw them on eBay. It was something that just happened.
bizSD: So you weren’t always looking to start a company, you just created this product and realized that there was a demand for it?
Byerline: That’s exactly what happened.
Byerline: Was there a defining moment that made you realize that you had a valuable product?
When some of our diapers sold for over $200 on eBay, at the time there was only one other manufacturer that made similar diapers to what I had made. There was a large demand for that, and we just filled that demand.
bizSD: Describe the process of growing the business?
Byerline: Originally I sewed every diaper by hand in my home. Then, while still in my home I had to hire an outside contractor to help with selling. The contractor went out of businesses, which pushed us from selling at home to leasing a building. We leased a building for three years and then this past May we purchased a building. Everything is still made in San Diego. Everything is made right in our building. And we also have a small boutique store.
bizSD: What advice would you offer to other mothers looking to start their own businesses?
Byerline: The biggest thing to look out for, and the one piece of advice I like to give, is to schedule time for yourself and your kids. Even though I was a stay-at-home mom, I worked all the time. I really did not spend as much time with my children as I wanted to, or hoped to. The business overtook my fun time and TV overtook the babysitting. If I were to go back and do things differently, I would change the way that I worked. I would change my work schedule so that I was with the kids more during the day and working more in the evening’s verses working 24/7.
bizSD: How did you find that balance between work and family? Do you think you have found it now?
Byerline: I have found it now. It took moving the business out of the house and cutting the ties that way. I can come home after I pick the kids up from school and say, “That’s it, I’m done.” Then it’s all kids for the rest of the day. I don’t always do that, but I like to do that. I strive to do that. But that is what I recommend to people: you really have to make that time for the family if you’re working from home or you miss it all.
bizSD: Originally, there was a demand you needed to fill. Now are you starting to push and sell the product more?
Byerline: We’re the second-largest manufacturer now for our particular style of cloth diaper. The demand is always there because of who we are. But we are also trying to sell it. We’re trying to make reusable diapers more widely acceptable. We’re trying to dismiss myths about cloth diapers. We’re trying to get more people interested in them. But we do still have a large demand for them. Our business grows at a rate of about 30% per year.
Has it been a difficult process to get people to accept the diapers?
Byerline: When people see them and touch them, they’re able to see that they’re not like pins and pre-folds. The immediate thoughts that come into mind when you think about cloth diapers are a reusable, hot, plastic pant with a pre-fold and a pin. We’re able to show that it’s different. The biggest thing that we’ve had to get over is what do we do with the mess? Once people can get over that little hump, then it is really easy to turn somebody on to cloth diapers.
What was the most difficult part of getting to where you are today and what adversity did you have to overcome?
Byerline: The most difficult thing to do has been minimizing growth, and learning that minimizing growth is better than maximizing growth. A lot of people think, "Wow, I can grow really fast." But I've learned through watching other companies, and through personal experience, that growing fast is not the best path for us. We need to be able to afford to bring in raw goods in a timely manner in order to grow. Growth cost money, and that has been a real struggle for us--it's something that we struggle with almost everyday. We have people who want to retail our products all the time, and a lot of times we have to turn them away because we just don't want to grow that fast yet.
Do you ever worry about competition coming in?
Byerline: I worry about the big guys sometimes, whether or not the disposable companies are going to catch on, because they have the financial means to overtake any of us smaller businesses. There is also a good amount of competition online. There are plenty of work-at-home moms—just like I used to be—who make diapers out of their home. They take our products apart and copy them. But what are you going to do?
People send me links all the time of an exact duplicate of our product that somebody is selling. But, they're not going to be in business long if they're copying, hopefully. So we just strive to do our best and keep trudging along.
