Sweet Dreams for an Entrepreneurial Woman with a Passion for Pajamas
This is a guest post from female entrepreneur Anita Mahaffey, writing about her experiences with starting her own business.
What do night sweat pajamas and a summer in Turkey have in common? For 49-year-old mompreneur Anita Mahaffey, the connection goes deep and in fact years later catapulted her into a business manufacturing and designing a line of menopause sleepwear called Cool-jams to help combat night sweats and hot flashes.
“As I boarded my flight in 1976 to spend the summer as an exchange student in Turkey, I would have laughed my way off the plane if someone told me that in 30 years I would be back in Turkey manufacturing hot-flash sleepwear. I had no idea that my past would come back to tap me on the shoulder in such a big way.”
Fast forward to the birth of Ms. Mahaffey’s second child in 1987. To spend more time with her growing family she decided to leave corporate marketing to pursue her own business. She recognized that a small business would allow her to spend more time with her children, while enabling her to pursue her dream of entrepreneurship.
“It was natural for me to think of establishing some kind of import/export business there,” Ms. Mahaffey explains. “I understood the culture and loved the people. While researching different business ideas, I discovered that Turkey had grown into one of the biggest textile producers in the world. It was an easy decision to choose textiles as my importing focus.”
Ms. Mahaffey returned to Turkey to renew relationships with her old exchange student friends. She discovered that some of her Turkish friends were now successful business owners who had the same vision of exporting textile products. By collaborating with a friend and his factory, she soon began developing sleepwear programs for many of the largest U.S. retailers and catalogs.
In 2005, while making a routine visit to her factory, she discovered a new micro-fiber fabric. Ms. Mahaffey, an avid hiker and runner, was accustomed to wearing micro-fiber apparel while exercising because it wicks away perspiration and dries quickly.
Ms. Mahaffey explains, “As soon as I felt this new fabric, I knew I had a winner. The “hand-feel” was incredible…very silky, soft and lightweight…nothing like the rough textured micro-fiber sports apparel I had at home. It seemed like a promising fabric for hot-flash sleepwear. I must admit, part of my motivation was to develop a pajama to provide relief for my own menopausal-related night sweats. I also knew that there were probably millions of other people with the same problem. If this fabric tested well, it would be the answer to my prayers.”
Mahaffey quickly became fixated on the idea of creating a line of pajamas that would help to remedy night sweats. The fabric was tested by an independent laboratory, confirming its wicking and quick-drying properties. The test results stated that the fabric dried 100% faster than cotton or poly/cotton blend fabrics. The micro-fiber rapidly absorbed moisture, pushing it through the fabric so the moisture evaporated quickly.
This was the start of Cool-jams.
“Customers can find other sleepwear lines for night sweats, but many of the products that we found were expensive,” explains Ms. Mahaffey. “We decided to create a collection of high quality products priced 25-40% lower than competitor’s products. We hope to make a difference in people’s lives by making night-sweat pajamas more affordable.”
There are many causes for night sweats, including menopause, chemotherapy, certain medications, obesity and thyroid dysfunction. Sometimes people’s internal thermostat just runs warm, a problem that can affect men and women alike. To provide a solution Cool-jams offers a line of women’s sleepwear in sizes ranging from small to 3X. Mahaffey also plans to add a Cool-jams men’s sleepwear line for spring 2008.
Cool-jams, Inc. was founded by Anita Mahaffey in September 2006. At this time, Cool-jams sleepwear can be found online at www.cool-jams.com. The website offers a variety of micro-fiber sleepwear as well as free tips to help combat night sweats.
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