Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: MONDAY, June 18, 1990 TAG: 9006180343
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: A-5 EDITION: EVENING
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: CHARLOTTESVILLE LENGTH: Medium
"We always seemed to be losing them, or it would get filthy," said Michael's mother, Barbara Levisay, who turned the blanket problem into the foundations of a new business.
She and her husband, Mark, established Featherstone Inc. in January and have just released the new company's first product - Lovies Two, a pair of matching security blankets.
Lovies Two is an outgrowth of how Levisay solved her dilemma with Michael, now 5, and his need to hold something comforting. She made him a duplicate blanket. "That worked out very well," she said.
Converting what worked at home into a viable consumer product is proving difficult, however.
"We're doing real well in sales to our friends, and the response we're getting back has been terrific," she said of the Lovies Two. "But we have to prove ourselves before we get shelf space" in stores.
"It'll take a little time," she said.
The Lovies Two package offers parents, for about $20, something like a replacement insurance policy for security blankets, or "one to wash and one to love," as the company's advertising brochure says.
Levisay has hired a contractor to make the all-cotton blankets. She, her husband and her mother, who commutes here from Elkton, Md., handle the packaging, sales and distribution.
"It's a good idea," said Bunny Barnes, buyer for the five-store Milby's Just Kids chain of children's shops in the Richmond area.
Milby's has put Lovies Two in its inventory, but it hasn't been there long enough to get a feeling for consumer acceptance, Barnes said.
"I'll be very honest, they've been slow," she said of initial sales. "But she's got everything in line and her marketing and packaging are wonderful. It's just something we've got to get across to other people."
Levisay said she also has found stores in the Charlottesville and Washington, D.C., areas to give Lovies Two a tryout. In all, seven chains with about a dozen retail outlets offer the matching blankets.
"It's not something that's really been on the market before," said Barnes, who has begun offering a Lovies Two package to hospitals that conduct baby classes for new parents. The hospitals usually offer the package as a door prize at a final parents' meeting after their baby is born.
"I thought it would help to get it out and let people see it," she said.
Barnes said Levisay is "doing all the right things" to find buyers for Lovies Two. "It's just that her marketing and business skills are ahead of her product."
by CNB