With countless baby products on the market, Nikki Hall thought she could find a two-sided pacifier for her niece. While babysitting, Hall and her husband Chris started to notice how her niece would reach for her pacifier and try to put it in her mouth in an effort to self-soothe.
Hall, who has an associate degree in interdisciplinary early childhood education, said that through her training, she recognized the different stages of development in children from birth.
“Due that her fine motor skills that were just developing, she always grasped the pacifier by the nipple side because it was the easiest to hold,” Hall said. “While trying to place the pacifier in her mouth, she always received the backside due to the way she was holding the pacifier. This caused her to become frustrated when she wasn’t receiving the nipple part of the pacifier.”
Chris encouraged her to look online to see what products were on the market.
That’s when Nikki told her husband, “I wonder why no one has made a pacifier with two nipples so that baby will always receive a nipple when learning to self-soothe.”
After searching the internet every possible way to find a double-sided pacifier and realizing there was nothing on the market, the Hall’s made the decision to create a solution on their own.
“We did recognize that there had been patents with different designs on multiple nipple pacifiers, but because of the size, the mold was unable to be made to create the pacifiers,” she said. “This gave us something to figure out.”
Hall explained to her husband that the design they created made more sense because at birth, an infant would not need a double-sided pacifier.
“Being a parent of a baby who took a pacifier, I knew that when a baby gets used to a certain pacifier, that most likely they wouldn’t switch,” she said. “That’s when our focus changed to not only a double-sided pacifier but also how to create an individual pacifier that can eventually turn into a double-sided pacifier.”
So they created BouncyBoo, a Double-Sided pacifier.
Once they knew how they wanted the pacifier to function, the next step was to create two identical pacifiers that would interlock when the baby was learning self-soothing skills.
“After deciding to make the pacifiers pop together, we knew we were ready to finalize the drawings, create the patent, and find someone to help with manufacturing our pacifier,” Hall said.
The Hall’s were very hands-on when it came to the design and development of their product. They reached out for advice from friends who had manufactured items themselves.
“We wanted to have our pacifiers manufactured in the U.S., but as we started adding up the cost, we decided to take our friends’ advice to use a manufacturer in China,” she said. “We took the contacts given to us and Chris went to China.”
Both Nikki and Chris met with everyone that would be helping make their product to guarantee everything was being done properly and by U.S. standards.
“The last thing we wanted was to create something we weren’t proud of,” she said.
The Hall’s said the entire experience was amazing.
“Not only have we learned a lot, made new business friendships, but have created a product we are very proud of,” she said. “When we started this whole process, our focus was to create a solution to a problem.”
The Hall’s believe the BouncyBoo pacifier is perfect for “baby today and tomorrow.”
BouncyBoo Double-Sided pacifiers are sold at their website and through Amazon.
