Meet Ileana Swanson of Sun Sprout Cloth Diaper Service

Today we’d like to introduce you to Ileana Swanson.

Thanks for sharing your story with us Ileana. So, let’s start at the beginning and we can move on from there.
I was new to this country and I was looking for a job. My husband said, “why don’t we start a business”. We started looking for ideas for an Eco-friendly/socially-responsible business since that is an important part in our hearts.

After looking for ideas, we found out that there was not a diaper service at that time in Tucson. We started researching and found out what a terrible impact disposable diapers were making on our planet. For example, one baby’s diapers can produce a ton of waste into the landfill. There are also a lot of health concerns with the use of disposable diapers.

So we started Sun Sprout Cloth Diaper Service in early 2013. It was just my husband and I and at the same time, we were expecting our first child. In 2017, we started to serve the Phoenix area since there was not a diaper service at that time and we would get calls and emails all the time from there. Our business has grown from 1 to 5 employees during these seven years. We have served hundreds of families and wash thousands of diapers every week. Our mission is to provide the best for the baby and the environment, to help families be successful when using cloth diapers and to create jobs with living wages to support our local economy.

Great, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
It has been challenging but we have been lucky finding great people around us. Putting the word out about our service was not easy, specially when advertising is so expensive for a small business. Also, learning things like bookkeeping, taxes, washing formulas, best products to use can be overwhelming.

We started this business while we were expecting our first child. Now our children are 5 and 7 years old. So during that time, especially when they were younger, it was quite challenging. But remembering how hard those years were makes us connect to our clients in a personal way. We want to support them in the same way people have supported us during those years.

Alright – so let’s talk business. Tell us about Sun Sprout Cloth Diaper Service – what should we know?
Every week at the convenience of your home, we deliver clean cotton diaper to your doorstep and we pick up the dirty diapers from the previous week. We provide all the diapers you need, a diaper pail especially made for cloth diapers to store them in a sanitary way and other cloth diapering accessories.

We host regular cloth diapering classes to our clients and the general public in Phoenix and Tucson.

We have a commercial laundry facility guided by professionals that program our different wash formulas so you’re guaranteed all diapers will be completely clean at a hospital grade. Our machines are highly efficient and we can wash hundreds of diapers at a time and we use less water, gas and electricity than home washing machines making our process more ecologically sound than disposables or washing your own cloth diapers at home.

Our delivery routes are carefully planned to deliver diapers promptly and efficiently.

I am proud for the millions of diapers we have prevented from ending up in the landfill and for the impact in the local economy during these years. Every payroll day, I feel so happy to be able to employ wonderful people who love their job.

Is there a characteristic or quality that you feel is essential to success?
We are are a service-oriented business. We provide a prompt, compassionate and helpful customer service.

We are always looking for new ways to make our processes more efficient to keep growing an innovative and eco-friendly business.

We are out in our community to promote cloth diapering and make it more mainstream.

Set up your service:

• Our minimum to start the service is 4 weeks.
• We offer discounts for 26 and 52 weeks subscriptions.
• https://www.sunsprout.us/cloth-diaper-service-prices

Contact Info:

• Address: Classes, retail store and diaper demonstrations by appointment only.
  Tucson: 3841 North Oracle Road, Tucson, AZ 85705
  Phoenix: 2942 N 24th Street Ste #114 Phoenix AZ 85016
• Website: www.sunsprout.us
• Phone: (520) 351-2370
• Email: info@sunsprout.us
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/sunsproutdiaperservice/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/pg/sunsproutclothdiaper/
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/sunsproutdiaper
• Yelp: https://www.yelp.com/biz/sun-sprout-cloth-diaper-service-tucson
• Other: https://directory.localfirstaz.com/listing/sun-sprout-cloth-diaper-delivery-service.html

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