Growth Potential
Gorski drew a simple floral design, hired a graphic designer to turn it into a digital image and began researching which shoulder mothers used most for burping by posing the question on social-networking sites and to friends — the right shoulder. She found an Arizona company to silk-screen a black design on a white shirt and a white design on a black shirt.
“Objects with patterns having 100 percent contrast are easiest for newborns and young infants to see,” she explains. “High-contrast graphics improve babies’ early recognition.”
The $26 Baby See T-shirt was the beginning of Zeebabee Designs, a company Gorski launched in 2007 with a $10,000 loan from her parents. The business also spawned the Burp See burp cloth, a $14 cotton diaper (or two for $20) with a single strip of black-and-white abstract-print fabric stitched down the middle (to amuse baby) and trimmed in various colors of grosgrain ribbon (to make it more attractive to mothers and gift-giving friends and relatives). The burp cloth, once sold only on zeebabee.com, is now available in eight gift shops and boutiques from Maryland to Kansas, including The Littlest Details in Avon, and eight online stores.
Gorski does all the work herself. A retired Michigan seamstress assembles all the Burp Sees. Work hours are limited to when son Matthew, 5, is in kindergarten and son Justin, 3, is napping or when both are sleeping. As a result, sales are still counted in the hundreds, but that hasn’t curbed her ambition.
“My goal is to have my products in Nordstrom or Macy’s,” she says