IdeaConnection: Invention success story: Nap Nanny

Invention Success Story

Nap Nanny

Breakthrough:
Innovative foam design cradle that mimics the contours of a car seat to improve sleep for babies that don’t like to lie flat.

Inventor:
Leslie Gudel, United States

Financial reward:
$250,000 +

The Story:
Nap Nanny

TV sports anchor Leslie Gudel tried everything to get her baby daughter to sleep. During the first year of her life the restless infant would only doze off in a car seat. But it isn’t an ideal crib. Hoping to find a more satisfactory solution Gudel hit the shops to buy an infant bed shaped like a car seat for home use. She couldn’t find one so the sleep-deprived presenter decided on a second career – she became an inventor, but only after some prompting from her husband Jamie who said: “Why don’t you stop talking about it and just make it.”

Now you might think that the baby item market is flooded with blanket, mattress, and slumber solutions for infants, but even in the most saturated of markets there’s always a gap to be found for an ingenious eye. And Gudel discovered it. There was nothing like the bed she wanted, and she felt certain that plenty of tired and bedraggled parents were in the same boat as her. So she got down to work. That was in 2004 and it took her four years to design, develop, prototype, patent and eventually bringing her product to market, spending around $200,000 in the process.

Sleeping Like a Baby

Her initial idea was to design something that could be put in a crib, but the American Academy of Pediatrics doesn’t recommend anything but the baby to be placed inside a crib so the idea evolved into the Nap Nanny.

The Nap Nanny is a groundbreaking innovation to improve infant sleep. Traditionally, frazzled and frustrated parents would turn to mattress wedges for babies that don’t like to sleep flat. But inevitably babies roll off them and Gudel found that they just didn’t work for her daughter.

Her Nap Nanny innovation sits at a 30 degree elevation at the back and curves gently at the bottom to cradle baby and prevent sliding. A safety harness keeps the baby securely in place and the whole product weighs just three pounds. Not only does it help babies to sleep peacefully that don’t like being flat, but babies with reflux, colic, earache, and a number of other illness have also been able to get a good night’s rest. So successful has the invention been in this department that the medical community is sitting up and taking notice. Some pediatricians are writing prescriptions for it, and a handful of hospitals are recommending it. There’s also now a Health Care Professionals page on the Nap Nanny website to help with inquiries.

Invaluable Help

Gudel is a sportscaster working for Comcast SportsNet in Philadelphia. She had no prior experience of the baby products market or of inventing, but received some invaluable help along the way. At a charity fundraiser for a local good cause she donated a guitar signed by Jon Bon Jovi. When the man who bought it turned up at her house to pick it up he noticed her drawings of the Nap Nanny and stepped into help. He introduced her to someone who helped her to find a foam manufacturer. Initially injection molded foam was used, but then she found a foam fabricator who could cut it and glue it together at a cheaper cost, and the foam was much lighter too. And one of her neighbors who sows items for friends helped with the covers.

Steep Learning Curve

It’s been a huge learning process for Gudel as the entire enterprise was outside of her ordinary professional scope. And although it may seem a simple product there were so many aspects to its development, and each presented their own set of challenges. Gudel had to make sure she had the right kind of foam, that it would be lightweight and not too bulky. And care had to be taken over the choice of fabric and liner as there are so many regulations governing children’s products; for example there can’t be any lead, and there must be flame retardant in the foam. But she continued to learn, and brought in people as she needed them.

Patent Approved

Nap Nanny was patent approved in September 2008 and launched in January 2009. Within the first nine months 7,500 were snapped up by moms eager to catch some zzzzzs – for them and for baby. Gudel’s company now has 11 employees all working out of their homes, but the plan is to move into an office in 2010 as the business continues to flourish.

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