Wild Child Clothes Blog » Industry News

Global Mamas

renee — Sun, 21 Feb 2010 03:37:16 +0000

Global Mamas Yin Yang Halter Dress in Rose

Just got in the new spring ’10 Global Mamas catalogue and I’m excited! They have some really cute new styles, colors and fabrics. I’m going to place a BIG order for our store and you should see the new spring line arriving at Wild Child sometime in March. Can’t wait!

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I Can Make That!

renee — Mon, 15 Feb 2010 16:33:35 +0000

Over the years we’ve had lots of people look at any given item of clothing in our shop, balk at the price and exclaim, I can make that myself! Yes, true and short of something like brain surgery, I can probably do a lot of things myself too. Indeed I have spent countless hours of my time cutting pieces of lumber, re-cutting (because I measured wrong) drilling holes, re-drilling holes (measured wrong!) putting it all together for a wobbly little crooked shelf that I made myself. When you consider the actual amount of time & effort spent looking for and getting the materials together, then preparing the materials (cutting, measuring) then putting them together-is it really worth it? Everybody out there is trying to make a living with their own little talents, please support them! I guess I am mainly talking about the individuals out there and the small USA made companies, not the big corporations outsourcing their products to the lowest bidder. In our business my partner does the garment dying of all our beautiful, colorful Wild Child clothes that we sell. He has in certain circumstances sold small amounts of dye and provided instructions for a customer to dye a piece of clothing themselves and every time they come back and say it’s waaaayyy too much work. We on the other hand have all the tools and are set up to do this, and our results are fantastic. About 95% of our Wild Child clothes are made by small companies right here in the US and the other 5% are made by small workers collectives. I feel so good supporting these products, I hope you do too.

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Hi Again!

renee — Mon, 15 Feb 2010 15:51:01 +0000

It’s been a while. We’ve been busy with the website, in case you haven’t checked-take a look wildchildclothes.com. Lot’s of great new products on it. Everyone always says, your site should look like your store and I thought that’s hard-we have sooo many things in our store, how am I going to show everything? Slowly though we are making our website look more and more like our store. It’s been fun, we put bits of the best of everything on our site. Now spring is starting to arrive daily(new clothes!) so I take my camera and quickly take a picture of something new and cute and get it on the site (with the help of our fantastic webmaster JonahCoyoteDesign). It’s great!

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Plastic-Free Teething Rattle

renee — Tue, 08 Sep 2009 02:04:10 +0000

We carry these interesting teething toys that are made out of cornstarch resin. They’re biodegradable which is so cool-too many of our baby’s toys etc. end up in the landfill all too quickly. What are we thinking? This is not about our future, it’s about theirs and their childrens children and so on (we’re supposed to think 7 generations ahead). So I think every little thing we buy can take that into account. We also carry natural rubber wood rattles and organic cotton towel dolls that can be chewed on as well to relieve some of the teething irritation that babies experience. In general we like to stay away from plastic toys as much as we can.

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New! Zutano!

renee — Thu, 27 Aug 2009 01:59:52 +0000

New fall shipments are pouring in at Wild Child. Today we got in our huge fall order of Zutano. I think most everyone is familiar with this brand because it is always so great. They have wonderful colors and the best coordinating prints. Their clothes are very mix and match and there are so many cute combinations. Zutano’s boy prints and colors have always been super strong- no excuse of “no cute boy clothes” with this line! What’s so cool about Zutano is that this season’s prints and solids go with last seasons, plus they always repeat the very best ones from past seasons too. So when buying new pieces, they’ll match some of the pieces your baby already has. I really like their silhouettes too, real simples lines and comfortable, practical styles. The emphasis seems to be on colors, prints and the super useability of their clothes. Love this line! Come in while the selection’s great.

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Motherease Cotton Diapers

renee — Fri, 14 Aug 2009 17:49:22 +0000

At Wild Child we carry the Motherease brand of one-size fits all diapers. They are made of luscious terry cloth and have this nifty snap adjustment that fits newborn to 35lbs. You can also buy snap in liners that turn this absorbant diaper into a double diaper that is good for older children or heavy wetters. Our customers have loved these diapers and have given us good feedback on them. Some have said they’d purchased various brands to try them out and the one’s that worked the best were the Motherease diapers. They also make a waterproof diaper cover with adjustable snaps on the sides which are meant to go with their diapers. However, we do sell the covers often to be used with peoples own diapers and we have had really good feedback on the covers either way. One thing to keep in mind is to not buy them used as they may very well leak. The company told me that a waterproof diaper cover is meant to last 4-6mo, and after that the waterproofing may be worn out. At this point you would need the next size anyway. The covers do come in sizes small through xlarge.

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We Love our Customers

renee — Mon, 27 Jul 2009 16:56:26 +0000

My partner and I were just talking the other day how we learn things from our customers. We had a woman come in who started talking about amber jewelery as a teething necklace for a baby. I had never heard of this but thought it sounded interesting so I googled it and sure enough they have them. What I found really unusual was that they are meant to be worn by the baby but not to be chewed on. I guess (and I had heard this before) that this ancient fossilized tree sap has healing properties, so just wearing it is effective for fussy teething babies. Fascinating! Of course the necklace should never be used unsupervised, only when you are holding the baby or when the baby is right there with you. And imagine how cute!!! Anyway I just wanted to pass this on and I’m actually going to be trying this out on myself (I have some neck stiffness) so I’ll let you know how it goes.

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Health Insurance for Everyone!

jonahcoyote — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 01:12:45 +0000

Hey everybody, so what does this topic have to do with a baby/children’s store? Well I happen to think that almost everything has to do with everything else. I believe many things are connected as are we human beings connected. I believe citizens ot the wealthiest country in the world should have access to affordable healthcare. I believe our president is correct when he says we need this for the well being of our economy. Speaking from personal experience as a small business owner, our family has not been able to afford any meaningful health insurance(our deductible is $10,000) for the past 20 years- so we basically don’t go to the doctor & we keep our fingers crossed. Honestly, there is no way we could afford anything else and we are not the only small business in this situation. I believe that not providing health insurance to the workers in our country puts us at a huge competitive disadvantage. It puts unfair burdens on the employers who are trying to do the right thing and still DO provide it. I implore everyone to call their representatives and voice your support for single payer healthcare. You may not need it but your children might someday or your neighbor might or your favorite independent bookstore, children’s store or cafe might. Small businesses contribute greatly to our communities, let’s keep them healthy.

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Made in the USA

renee — Mon, 04 May 2009 01:49:50 +0000

I’m seeing a lot of manufacturers/retailers touting “fair trade” these days and I think it’s great! Some of it is even organic. But… the only problem here is that a lot of it is being shipped from halfway accross the globe. Speaking for myself, I really believe in a local economy. Being in the apparel industry, it’s not always easy. More and more apparel is being produced overseas. Recently though, I’ve noticed a few companies that are “made in the USA”, and I think that is great! Sometimes it can be hard for a retailer such as myself to sell those items because let’s face it- if those companies are paying American wages, the clothes are going to cost more than paying someone $1.00 an hour in some third world country. But come on, we need jobs here too. We should be able to make things and sell them here, and the people in third world countries should be able to make and buy their own products too. We’ve gotten ourselves into a bit of trouble (environmental, economic, social) by demanding cheap goods made elsewhere. I am really proud to have quite a few lines in my shop that are USA made. I guess when I see something that’s made in the USA, I don’t really need to question if it’s fair trade- I assume it is. If it’s being produced in a sweatshop here in the USA(it can happen), it would be totally against the law. If children were being used, it would be against the law. If the workers were subject to substandard working conditions, it would be against the law. If the workers were being forced to work a 60 hour week without overtime pay, it would be against the law. And so on. So when I buy something that says “Made in the USA” I am trusting that the item is being made fairly and, it’s not using all that fuel to get it here. So, next time you’re looking for “fair trade” or “organic”, consider USA made, and then put pressure on those companies to produce “organic, made in the USA”.

By the way, a couple of USA made companies are “Barley & Birch” (we may pick them up), “Pixel Organics” (we carry them), “Flaphappy” (we carry it), “Pea Soup” (made in Chicago area), “Pluto”, “Bog Togs” (unique, handmade in Wisconsin!) , “Earhart” ( great tie on baby caps that we carry, made in Cary, Il.). And- our own hand-dyed clothing some of which is organic, most of which is USA made. These are just a few, I’m sure I’m forgetting something! More on this later.

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Is it organic?

renee — Tue, 31 Mar 2009 03:12:21 +0000

Just got back from a buying trip to Chicago. Wow, there’s a lot of great little start-up companies out there, especially ones using organically grown cotton. I continue to be amazed at how fast the organic movement is growing!

I think there are still a lot of people who don’t really understand the point of organically grown cotton. Well, there’s a few different issues. The first is just about the amount of chemicals (pesticides, herbicides, etc.) used to grow regular cotton. Since cotton is not a food crop, there is not much restriction on the chemicals that are used. I have read that these are toxic chemicals and are used in huge amounts to grow cotton. Not only do these chemicals deplete the soil but they also end up in runoff that gets into our precious groundwater, as well as lakes and streams (since everything is connected). It might be easy to not give it too much thought since it’s not in our back yard, but I can assure you it’s in someones back yard. And speaking for myself, this planet of ours is feeling smaller and smaller all the time.

In my own life, I feel deeply connected to all the people that we share the earth with. When I see images of little children in third world countries playing around toxic waste areas because they are poor and have no choice, it’s painful thinking their parents probably love and care about them as much as we do our children. So, I don’t want to be a part of poisoning our earth no matter whose back yard it’s in.

Even from a selfish point of view, we are all connected and the planet is all connected. Let’s do it for ourselves. More on this topic later.

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