It's been quite a year!

The Fishnoodles story has been all about change. I surely didn't start a cloth diaper business with everything figured out in advance! In fact, my intent was never to carry out a predetermined business plan. Instead I tried to listen to what mamas were asking for, and to move in those directions, learning from my customers how to best meet their needs. It seems this has worked out pretty well.

We're getting close to the end of 2010, and so much has happened this past year. When I think back to the start of the year, I was still sewing everything myself, just little ol' me!

The major firsts of 2010 -

• talented seamstresses began sewing our diapers
• we had our first custom diaper fabrics, binding, and snaps made for us
• we branched out from Hyena Cart to open our own online store

Now we're moving on in even more new directions for 2011, growing from one online store to two!
These are:
Bright Star Baby - blog - facebook - for trim fitting bamboo cloth diapers and diaper covers
and
Diaper Sewing Supplies - blog - facebook - for all sorts of cloth diaper fabrics and specialty notions

I hope that you find these developments exciting and will continue to journey along with me at the place that best meets your needs, whether for diapers or for sewing supplies.

If you want to know why...

...Fishnoodles is now Bright Star Baby, the story is here: http://brightstarbaby.blogspot.com/2010/12/how-did-we-choose-bright-star-name.html

Please join us at Bright Star if you haven't already. Even though the only thing that has changed is the name, spam prevention rules do not permit me to move email subscribers to the new list. You have to add yourself and we sure hope you will!

We are also on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/BrightStarBaby We are having a giveaway - each time we hit 100 additional "Likes" everyone is automatically entered into a drawing for a gift certificate. And the amounts keep going up!

So come on over, and you'll be first to know when the new diapers are released!

Fishnoodles on TV

One of our customers, Juliane Wylie, wrote into her local news station and got cloth diapers featured as a news story! Rock on Juliane! If you know her, be sure and give her some cyber kudos.

http://www.wfmj.com/global/category.asp?c=179433&clipId=5351058&topVideoCatNo=127724&autoStart=true

We were thrilled to see our Fishnoodles diapers on TV! In the first shot Juliane's baby is wearing a Nantucket plaid, and in the last shot a Turtle Friends Solo Flyer.

Now, the pediatrican in the story didn't think there are any health benefits to cloth, but over all it was a positive story, or at least "balanced." Unfortunately there is no place to leave comments, but maybe some parents will see the story and give cloth diapers a try.

Fishnoodles is now Bright Star Baby

Fishnoodles online store is getting a name change! Fishnoodles diapers and covers will be sold at our new store, Bright Star Baby. In addition, we will be introducing a wonderful new diaper in 2011 under the Bright Star label.

Why the name change?
When we opened "Fishnoodles" in 2008, the idea behind the name was fun and playful - a leaping, laughing fish made out of bowtie and rotini noodles. It made for a cute logo and our customers loved it. We wanted to stand out from the cloth diaper crowd of bums, bugs, and bees...and that we did.

There were some unintended consequences though. Pretty soon we started getting restaurant supply catalogs - clearly someone was data mining the business registrations - and it was amusing to imagine the hot dog roaster or neon "open" sign in our home kitchen. Then came the calls. Calls about health insurance for our wait staff and credit card processing services for our restaurant. Calls about our menu and specials. And then finally -- the shipment of fabric that was coded as a shipment of noodles and shipped to us on a special truck certified for food handling. It was time for serious consideration of a new name.

Want to hear how we came up with the new name, and what it means to us? Please click on this link to subscribe to Bright Star Baby and hear the rest of the story...note that you will have to activate the subscription. We'd simply switch everyone on the Fishnoodles mailing list over to Bright Star Baby but spam prevention does not allow us to add subscribers, you have to add yourself and verify that you meant to join. Thanks!

Subscribe to Bright Star by Email

Black Friday at Fishnoodles

The day after Thanksgiving in the US, "Black Friday" is a day of shopping discounts. In keeping with this tradition, Fishnoodles will be offering some specials on Friday, November 26th.

At Fishnoodles on Hyena Cart:
At 11:45 eastern time, over 60 items will become available, on a first come basis. These are seconds offered at a great discount. As usual, when I pull items out of my seconds bin, I often can no longer find the flaw...but since I saw something off at some point, a second it is! To keep people from immediately reselling these as first quality, the tag is marked with an orange dot.

At Fishnoodles Online Store:
Starting at 9:00 am eastern time and continuing throughout the day, use code BLKFRD for free shipping on diaper covers and all in one diapers.

On December 1st we will be announcing exciting new developments for our store...

Ready to Play?

Fishnoodles is a sponsor of the November 2010 Great Cloth Diaper Hunt!

The hunt starts on the 1st (yes, that's this Monday) so get ready!! Win prizes for finding hidden icons.

If you've never played before, it's a lot of fun. It works like this: you visit a list of natural parenting online stores. Each store has a diaper icon hidden somewhere in the store. When you find each icon and click it, you are automatically entered to win a variety of prizes. Plus, over at the Diaper Decisions FB fan page there will be daily giveaways throughout November.

If you need help, there is a forum where you can chat with other Hunters and the store owners can give hints.

We will offer a storewide discount for Hunters but you have to be registered for the Hunt to get the discount code. (Note: you don't actually have to find any icons to use the discount). Register here: http://www.diaperdecisions.com/pages/gcdhreg.php

Happy Hunting!

Our #1 Winner

The winner of last spring's new prints poll is in! The moms on our mailing list far and away chose this as their favorite print. So here we go - a sweet pink diaper with lots of little multi-color hearts. It's called "Love Me" and we sure hope you love it too.

Did I just say "last spring"? Yup, it takes about 6 months to go from idea to fabric to diaper. And that's with doing it all here in the USA. This super cute bamboo all in one is now in stock at www.fishnoodles.com, link: Solo Flyer AIO.