Youth Crews, a new Colorado-based youth diaper brand with a goal of providing more inclusive sizing for kids officially launched this month.
The company was started by Brady Crandall, a dad who said caring for his daughter helped him realize most diaper companies didn't produce inclusive sizes for kids.
“Our daughter was born with a severe brain injury called HIE, and so she has a few disabilities. I think the most visual or the most obvious externally, is cerebral palsy. And as she grew and got bigger, we started to realize that…there are no options for kids after they outgrow the baby diapers, until they're big enough for the adult diapers,” Crandall said.
So, Crandall decided to fix the problem by creating Youth Crews, for his 4-year-old daughter Gilli and other kids, aged 4 to 17 years old, who are searching for a better-fitting product.
“We surveyed hundreds of families in our community, and 99% said that there was a huge need for a diaper for kids,” Crandall said. “Ninety-six percent of all the people who responded to our survey said it was a top five daily problem, which was staggering to us, because a lot of these kids are dealing with epilepsy, seizures. A lot of them use feeding tubes.”
Crandall said after doing additional research, he realized youth diapers weren’t being produced, and instead families used creative ways to try to make adult diapers fit their kids.
“The diaper industry is really segmented into adult diapers and baby diapers, all the way down to the machines that they're made on. And so, it's really challenging to build a diaper in these sort of in between sizes,” Crandall said.
But Crandall said he worked through the challenges and started the company alongside friend and mentor Perry Quinn, Youth Crews co-founder and Chief Financial Officer.
“Well, at first, call it denial. I couldn't believe that there was nothing available for this underserved, call it ‘market’, but it's more-so communities,” Quinn said. “We just dropped off some diapers at a friend's house. I've known the family for a couple of decades. And the response from the mother was, their daughter had not had a diaper that fit her in 15 years, which to me was both unbelievable and unacceptable."
Quinn said helping start Youth Crews has been a scary but rewarding experience.
“We're a small company, and so we are trying to get in front of, ‘well, how many diapers do you make your first batch’. But at the same time, you know, if we just get 100 customers, which I would believe they're going to be quite a few more than that, but we're helping 100 families,” Quinn said.
“Our diapers hope to bring fit, comfort and dignity,” Crandall said. “With the specific disability that Gilli was born with, it was a brain injury. We didn't look back to figure out exactly what happened or why it happened, because it had already happened. But diapers are a tangible problem that affect thousands of kids, just like Gilli, and so if I can help fix that basic need, that's really rewarding.”
Crandall said Youth Crews isn’t just about diapers, the company also hopes to build a community where families feel supported and understood.
This story was originally posted by Micah Smith at Scripps News Denver.
