Kendra LaDuca’s eureka moment came while she was pushing a grocery cart through the aisles of a Costco seven years ago.
As she scanned the shelves, her infant daughter leaned over and started chewing on Kendra’s leather watchband. “She was slobbering on my arm, and I just let her because she was happy and I was able to shop,” says Kendra.
From that experience, Teething Bling was born. Kendra and her business partner, Amy Maurer Creel, developed a line of silicone pendants, bracelets and key chains that double as teething toys after realizing that they had stopped wearing jewelry since their kids were born.
“My husband said one day, ‘Why don’t you ever wear the jewelry I give you?’ ” Kendra recalls. “I said, ‘I don’t because they’re going to grab it.’ Also, when you want a teething toy, you can never find it. It’s always at the bottom of your diaper bag.”
The two formed their company, Smart Mom, in 2002, and spent the next four years finding a suitable material for Teething Bling, lab-testing it and refining prototypes. Made from latex-free silicone, the same material used to coat baby spoons, the matched necklaces and bracelets come in an array of colors and patterns, including camouflage and a pale flecked green that resembles jade.
They sell for $19 and $12, respectively, on the Smart Mom Web site. They spent about $60,000, mainly on product development, of which Amy contributed about $45,000 in savings; the rest came from Kendra and her husband.
Photo by Smart Mom.