With their children strapped to their backs, Angie Freeman Shephard and Theresa Perez get to work with their diaper delivery business, Happy Bottoms Diaper Service, reports Anchorage Daily News.
When Angie Freeman Shephard and Theresa Perez were pregnant last year, they tried to find a cloth diaper pickup and delivery service in Anchorage, but they discovered they lived in a diaper delivery-less town. They could have gone disposable, but instead they went “mom-preneurial” and started Happy Bottoms Diaper Service in December.
Now they say they’ve tapped into a decent dirty-diaper market. They expanded in July to the Valley.
On Friday at the Happy Bottoms headquarters — in Shephard’s downtown garage — the women packed diapers into bags for their 21 clients. Their own toddlers, Sam and Elizabeth, were strapped to their moms’ backs.
Shephard and Perez don’t wash the diapers — they leave that to a commercial cleaner’s high-powered machines. They are the go-between, providing the pickup and delivery on Mondays and Tuesdays.
Their system depends on a biodegradable plastic bag, which slips inside the laundry bag. The biodegrading bag disintegrates at 160 degrees — the temperature of a hot commercial wash. After the parents fill the bag with diapers, Shephard and Perez take it to the cleaners, and no one has to touch the dirty diapers.
Like a lot of niche services, their business model is to take something people are doing anyway and make it easier.
“It’s a little like recycling,” Shephard said. “I’m probably going to recycle anyway, but curbside is easier (than taking it to the recycling center).”
Photo by terren in Virginia