by Janet Hurley

Crankypants. Pumpkin Doodle. KidBean. Fun names for some seriously successful, mama-owned businesses born out of love for children and nurtured with earth-friendly ideals. Recession? What recession? These five web-based Asheville companies have seen their revenues grow—in some cases, skyrocket—in the last few years. Especially when they’re selling eco-friendly items like organic-cotton diapers and bamboo pajamas.

i Play Emi Kubota remembers how odd she felt being the only kid at school who had seaweed in her lunch. That’s because Kubota, now 31, is the daughter of Becky Cannon, who was green long before the word became a ubiquitous (and often misleading) marketing tool. In 1982, Cannon, now 58, was living outside Asheville and started importing diaper covers from Japan for her two daughters. She’d lived in Japan for three years in the ‘70s, studying natural foods and macrobiotic diets. She loved the brightly colored, simple aesthetic of the diaper covers, and her friends did too. So she imported more items, like biodegradable diaper liners. Soon she was running a mail-order baby products business, eventually named i play, from her home.

Cannon and five employees worked at her house in Kenilworth for nearly a decade before moving into a warehouse space. Their signature item, and still one of i play’s best sellers, is the swim diaper. According to Kubota, now i play’s director of marketing and strategy, it was the first reusable swim diaper on the market. The company has applied for a patent on the diaper’s design, a super-absorbent liner with a waterproof shell. After the diaper came swimsuits and "tankinis" with built-in diapers, and eventually Cannon, who has no formal business training, started selling non-toxic gear like raincoats and umbrellas. There were times, says Cannon, now i play’s CEO, that the years of emotional and physical investment didn’t seem worth it. For years, she didn’t draw a salary, and her daughters dealt with the chaos of a fast-growing at-home business. But the market was primed for i play’s products. "People want to buy green—it’s a priority," Cannon says.

By 2006, i play generated $5.7 million in annual revenue. This year, it’s on track to bring in close to $10.5 million and has 53 employees in an office park on Asheville’s Riverside Drive. In 2008, the company launched its own product line, Green Sprouts. Items like their PVC-free bottles and bibs are manufactured in Asia and sold through stores like Whole Foods, EarthFare and Bye Bye Baby, a division of Bed Bath & Beyond.

Crankypants Amy Kett of Crankypants Knits knows the power of mama word-of-mouth marketing, be it on the playground or on the web. In 2004, she sent a photo of a pair of hand-knitted wool "longies," worn over cloth diapers, to a friend in Michigan. Unbeknownst to her, the friend was so charmed by the skull and bones on the butt that she posted it on an online message board. Then Kett started to get emails. Lots of them. She saw an opportunity and got busy knitting, "as fast as my little fingers could," she says. Soon she was overwhelmed with demand for her arty, kitschy knit products like longies, which sell at www.crankypantshome.com for around $80 a pair. After research into knitting cooperatives and a few false starts, Kett met a man at a local fiber show who worked with a certified fair-trade Peruvian knitting cooperative. He took Kett’s longies to show the knitters, and they were able to reproduce them with Peruvian wool. So now her knits are made by 125 Peruvian women she’s never met. "It’s so fun to open the boxes I get from them," she says. Sometimes they send ideas for products, and occasionally special items for her son Henry.

KidBean Melissa Zenz of KidBean was just 22, a new mother and a committed vegan, and couldn’t find baby goods that weren’t made with animal products or plastic. "I was really anti-plastic," she says. Zenz knew there must be other vegan mothers who were as frustrated with the lack of options—and the lack of answers from companies about how vegan products were made, packaged or transported. So she developed a business plan and launched www.kidbean.com in 2004 with the tagline "Vegan Family Superstore," offering items like cloth diapers and baby swings. Zenz painstakingly researches products, offering up details to other "deep green" mothers. And herein lies the paradox of selling. "I’m an extremist, ethically. I’m a minimalist," she says. "Sometimes I will talk customers out of buying something that they just don’t need." Still, she talked plenty of them into buying. KidBean had more than $250,000 in gross sales in 2008, and net income grew by 178 percent in 2009. Zenz is adamantly opposed to manufacturing anywhere in Asia, and most products are made in the US, though she did work with a cooperative in Romania to develop a vegan KidBean shoe. This year, she plans to move from her house into a warehouse space with a daycare.

Pumpkin Doodle Lisa Hawkins, founder of Pumpkin Doodle, says it all started with cloth diapers and baby clothes made from bamboo. Since she launched web-based Pumpkin Doodle in 2006, her house in West Asheville has occasionally been piled high with bamboo charcoal and children’s clothing. Now, with the tagline "It’s hip to be green," www.mypumpkindoodle.com sells all sorts of eco-friendly products, from men’s and women’s clothing to pet products and stationery. Hawkins hasn’t ventured into private-label design or manufacturing. She works with suppliers like small-scale bamboo producers, whose toxin-free products can be drop-shipped directly to customers within 48-72 hours, which reduces carbon emissions.

The Modern Baby Company Jesseca Bellemare’s company has grown so quickly that she’s had to scale back. She started her web-based operation as Quilt Baby in 2006, selling hip, colorful quilts and other baby bedding. But she got more orders than she could handle, along with several wholesale inquiries. She teamed up with local cloth diaper manufacturer Baby Greens in 2008, bringing on three contract employees to help sell items like burp cloths and bibs. In 2009, Bellemare re-branded as The Modern Baby Company, www.themodernbabyco.com. Thanks to mentions on mommy blogs and stories in magazines like My Child, the business has continued to grow. But the website started to gobble up 35 to 40 hours each week, and Bellemare, a mother of two, is now expecting a third child. So she’s throwing on the brakes, continuing to sell apparel but phasing out most other products. "It’s exciting when your products are in demand and you get all this press. It’s exhilarating," she says. "But at some point, reality sets in."