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Necessity the mother of baby biz

— Q: Have you done other things?

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Doug Jones/Staff Photographer, Tuesday, April 29; 2008: Michelle Whitney operates Maisey Mae Designs from her Cape Elizabeth home. Her daughter LIla models a bib.

Doug Jones

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Doug Jones/staff photographer: Tuesday, April 28, 2008: Maisey Mae Designs detail of bibs "Nando", left, and "Madison", right, with "Brilliant Blue Sailboat" towels, center.

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A: Until a couple of years I worked in sales on the seafood team at Diversified Communications. My first job ever was scooping ice cream at Cottle's in Waterville. The best job, I'd say, was as assistant to a gourmet chef for a family on a privately owned island off Cape Cod, with two other girls from the tennis team. I was thrilled that my parents let me leave for the summer between high school and college.

Q: Which was at?

A: The University of North Carolina at Greensboro. I was a communications and public relations major. For my first year, I'd gone to Acadia in Nova Scotia, but there was nothing there I was interested in academically. I ended up at UNC and loved it, even though I'd never seen the school beforehand.

Q: Where did you work after school?

A: At the Mayflower Hotel in Washington, D.C. My first real job. I rotated in a management position from department to department. I started in the basement in the dishwasher department. The only one who spoke English. But I was (at the hotel) only a little over a year and a half. When I was managing the room service department, I cut through the tendon on my left pointer finger with a serrated knife and was sent to a urologist -- it was the policy of the hotel to send everyone to this doctor first, unless you'd had a heart attack or something. So he did my hand in the office, but he had no background in hand surgery and used dissolvable stitches, and I ended up coming back to Maine to stay with my parents, who had moved to Scarborough so that I could go to occupational therapy every day for more than six months.

Q: Phew! Then what?

A: I decided to move to Boston and had an interview at Fidelity -- a friend worked there. I went in and said, 'Just to let you know, I don't even know what a mutual fund is. I don't have any financial background.' But I got hired and two years later I was educating people on how to invest. That's how I met my husband (Chris). He interviewed me that day.

Q: So what exactly is the business?

A: It's a baby gift business. Burp cloths, chenille-backed bibs and big-brother and big-sister Ts. About 99 percent of the things that don't go to stores are personalized. Parents have just spent nine months thinking and arguing about what to name a baby -- when they finally agree on a name, they like to see it in writing. It's something permanent and tangible.

Q: And you're home-based?

A: I design at home and work with two local seamstresses, and I have two embroiderers. The names are embroidered by a retired fire department captain from South Portland, Ron Doucette. I e-mail him the orders and he has the supplies at his place.

Q: How many hours a week do you put into the business?

A: My biggest challenge, with three kids, is just having the time to do it. It's probably 30 hours a week; I have only one day a week without the kids. Right now Lyla is napping and both boys are in school. I should be looking for help now. My mom (Barbara Martin) works here two days a week and puts out all the orders.

Q: How did the business get started?

A: My older son, Sam, who's in kindergarten now, had a severe case of acid influx disease and would spit up all the time. I was going through four or five burp cloths a day, and they would fall apart in the wash, shrink, shrivel, yet we were really dependent on them. And a lot of my friends were having babies at that time. I thought, 'They could be better quality, and I've got one on my shoulder 24 hours a day, they could be cuter.' So out of necessity I made one and made a set for a girlfriend who had a daughter. Sam was sleeping all the time, and I was looking for something to do -- I love to work -- and I thought, 'Maybe this could be something. There must be other moms.' So it got started out of necessity, really. Then Charlie, who just turned 5 yesterday, by the time he came 22 months later, we had all these burp cloths for him. And he didn't spit up once, so they're still brand-new. But Lyla's a big spitter-upper.

Q: Haven't you sold some to celebs?

A: I've been lucky that way. The most recent was Marcia Cross, who wrote a nice thank-you note. Julia Roberts has them and wrote a nice note. And Gwyneth Paltrow -- she didn't write a note but And Courtney Cox. So that's been kind of fun.

Q: How do they hear about you?

A: Ninety-five percent of my individual business, which is 90 percent of the overall business, is through word of mouth. Someone gets a gift and then orders for friends. For Marcia Cross, a girlfriend of hers ordered. Gwyneth Paltrow was through a friend of a friend. With Julia Roberts, a couple of years ago, my former PR agency told me to send them to her PR person, who called me and started yelling at me out of the blue. 'This is Julia Roberts' PR person. Just to let you know: Our office does not accept gifts from people she does not know,' and I was like, 'Oh, sorry, I apologize,' and she was like, 'However. They are very cute and do have baby names on them so I will pass them on to Julia. But never use anything about Julia on your Web site or press materials.' But I figure she wrote a thank-you note, so it's OK.

Q: What would you be doing in another life?

A: That's hard, I can't picture a life outside my little studio in the basement! Isn't it bad? I would probably be doing this. I love where I am, with family close by, and what I'm doing. Maybe build another bedroom? I don't even think we'd move. I realize those aren't very good answers. But I was born and raised in Waterville. I'm a Mainer, and I think that's important.

Q: Where does the name come from? Do people call you Maisey?

A: All the time! That or 'Whitney.' For some reason, no one retains Michelle. I think the Julia Roberts note is addressed to 'Maisey.' But the name came from when my sister and I were in England in 2000. I'd never been abroad before. We were at a castle outside London and there was a beautiful little girl there, dressed in a little petticoat, and her mother called her Maisey Mae. The name stuck with me -- in North Carolina everyone had two names, like Mary Lou -- and I told my husband, 'If we ever have a girl, I want her to be named Maisey Mae.' He said, 'We're not from the South,' and I knew he would not budge on that; he's a good Boston boy. So it became the company name.

Q: Do you sell much within Maine?

A: Very little. Just recently a few individual orders. At one store in the Old Port, Miss Lulu's. And I've always been at Ann Veronica, here in Cape Elizabeth. And that's it in Maine. But I'm taking a class at the Small Business Development Center, which I should have done six years ago, and writing a business plan. One of the goals is to get into more stores and also to target first-time parents on a larger scale. But still, the growth rate has been 150 percent since November since the introduction of the new Web site, and the addition of the bibs and sibling Ts. I'm in with both feet now. I think it's working.