Hotslings Is Closing Down

Here's a wonderful article written by Leslie Kung regarding the matter. Please take time to read. Thank u...

The End of an Era
 
I'm about ready to cry. I just got some pretty bad news.
No, it wasn't about my hip injury or my lower lumbar fracture.
It's not news about finances or housing or relatives.

The news is that Hotslings, a work-at-home-mom company that made it big and helped SO many moms and babies be together in their pouch slings along the way, is closing up shop. They took a major blow when the CPSC recommended parents not use "slings" with babies younger than 4 months. Never mind that the "slings" determined dangerous really were bag style sling impossible to use safely and comfortably, designed and produced by engineers at a large corporation, bearing little resemblance to the fitted pouch sling produced lovingly by a WAHM who carried her own babies in them.

http://babycarrierindustryalliance.memberlodge.org/press?mode=PostView&bmi=399602

What's the big deal, you might ask.
It is the end of an era.

Hotslings are my FAVORITE pouch, the one I can size people in just by looking at them. The one pouch sling company that revolutionized the style of baby slings, brought color into the drab world of repetitive duckies and teddy bear prints. If you have ever seen a gorgeous sling in mod fabric and drooled over it, you can partly thank Kristen DeRocha who didn't believe that motherhood meant sacrificing style.

Remember the early 90's? Baby stuff had prints of bottles, ducks, bears, rattles, and if you didn't like that, there was plaid? Now mothers who own more than one sling are surfing the net and familiarizing themselves with names like Amy Butler and Micheal Miller. I didn't know anything about fabric until I got into babywearing. I didn't know much about sewing either. Now I can usually differentiate one designer from another, and tell what kind of fabric will make a good wrap by feel.

But enough about that. I want to tell you exactly WHY this is the end of an era.
For the past decade or more the Babywearing industry has grown exponentially. The options parents have for safe and ergonomic carriers has exploded. Sure the usual American parent still doesn't know the joys of snuggling their newborn or toddler in a soft carrier instead of lugging a car seat around or clicking it into their travel system, but they deserve to find out. Don't they?

Enough of us have felt the closeness that babywearing ensures to create a thriving industry--because we ALL love our children and slings are tools which go ALONG with our deepest instincts to carry and care for our babies. The reason that this market has grown so large so fast is not because slings and carriers are offering something new and unheard of. It's because they're giving us back something we've lost touch with. Along with the industrial revolution came working outside the home, and as a culture we lost the age-old knowledge of babywearing.

We started to think that a "good" baby is one who can be left with any caregiver, doesn't cry, and can be put down. Before families had to separate to find work and earn money, they lived together, slept together, and everyone carried the babies without criticism or complaint. Babies were just meant to be carried, and parents don't know how much love and ease of living they're missing out on if they don't have a good carrier.

I think they deserve to find out. What's happening right NOW will determine whether or not it'll be as easy as it has been to share our love for babywearing. In the past years, I've spent a lot of time with parents, volunteering to teach them how to use slings and carriers of all types. I almost always end up writing down a few brand names and sending them to shop online. I've written the name "Hotslings" on so many business cards, random scraps of paper, and napkins. Along the way, I've also gifted more than a dozen Hotslings to needy families, finding them the right fit and giving them the option of an easy and safe carrier.

If the baby carrier industry doesn't unite or get enough funding, we're looking at only store bought carriers. We'll be stuck either sewing our own things, without license to sell what we make, and only being able to buy things from companies that most likely manufacture in China, engineered by hired guns instead of hashed out at kitchen tables during nap times, and tried out by every mom and baby who could use a free hand.

In this bleak future, I won't be scrawling any brand names on pieces of paper and sending them home with parents excited to shop. It'll probably have to be the URL to mom and baby forums to trade and sell carriers manufactured during this past renaissance of babywearing, or links to sewing tutorials.

Now the CPSC is rightly concerned about infant deaths and the products associated with them. But if they don't know the difference between an open tailed, unpadded ring sling and a deadly, baby-suffocating bag style sling, HOW are they going to write fair regulations which protect products and companies like Kristen DeRocha's Hotslings?

By the way, you can thank her for pioneering one of the first and best fitted pouch sizing systems. Before Hotslings, everyone had a pouch that ended up at their knees instead of somewhere around their belly button to ensure a high and tight ergonomic carry. If we follow the directions for use, including the directions for proper fit, Hotslings are safe, quick, and easy to use. I will be so sorry to see the end.

So regulations are being written. Products are being recalled willy-nilly. A small WAHM company of ringslings is on the list, and now a titan of the babywearing world falls. Maybe it was a good run, but it could have been longer. What carriers are next? Will we have to sew all our pouch slings from tutorials online? What's your favorite sling or carrier? Are they safe? Most of them are small companies built around a mom who dared to dream. Do they have the resources to bounce back like Infantino did? As soon as their bag sling was recalled, they had a mei tai (the "wrap&tie") already in production, ready to replace the millions of bag slings which were deemed unsafe.

Should we leave the regulations and rules in the hands of those who mean well, but can't tell the difference between a "wrap" and a "mei tai?" The past decade has been a golden era, a renaissance of carriers of all types, sizes, shapes. We have had unlimited access to things of purpose and beauty, and now it's time to stand up and claim our RIGHT to these parenting tools.

Babies die or get hurt in cribs, playpens, car seats, and strollers far more often than in slings. We don't want to ban the production of any of these things either. What we should all work toward is writing a code that we can all agree on to ensure that the PRODUCT is safe, not ban products which CAN be used incorrectly.

We need to start by getting the right people to work with the CPSC in order to ensure soft baby carriers are not "thrown out with the bathwater." We have just the right team assembling in the Baby Carrier Industry Alliance. The top names from the slings and carriers world are teaming up with Dr. Sears and other experts in an attempt to save the businesses that have grown out of pure and simple love for our children.

Save the slings.


Join the BCIA:
http://babycarrierindustryalliance.org/
If you don't want to join and lend us the strength of your voice, donate. Even a few dollars makes a difference, and industry lawyers are expensive. Dare to make a difference. Show the world that mothers and women are a VERY important market, and that our voices can be heard.

Save the slings. Save babywearing.
It's too late for Hotslings. They've already decided to close their doors. Let us act before we see more companies on that list than ones still in business.

Original post taken from here : http://www.facebook.com/notes/leslie-kung/the-end-of-an-era/414852186236