What started out as an idea during a play date between local stay-at-home moms this past October has developed into Northwest Ohio’s one-of-a-kind baby store. Sweet Cheeks opened at the Promenade Shops on 5577 Monroe St. in Sylvania on May 3, providing natural and local baby products.

Sweet Cheeks co-owner Amanda Emch.

“Everything that we sell we’ve tried,” Sweet Cheeks co-owner Amanda Emch said. “Everything in here is either green or organic, or a more natural option to most all baby products. Not everything in the local section is green, but it’s all things that are made by people locally, so it’s eco-friendly because it wasn’t transported by any crazy means. They brought it all here.”

Originally, Emch and close friend and Sweet Cheeks co-owner Stephanie Pirrone were planning to just sell everything online. They decided on opening a store after meeting with reps for different products and discovering that some baby stores from Ann Arbor were thinking about expanding to Toledo. Until Sweet Cheeks opened, Emch said many local moms had to make the nearly hourlong trip up US-23 to shop for baby products at stores like The Little Seedling.

“A lot of our customers, when they come in they all know [The] Little Seedling,” Emch said. “They’ve all been there. Everybody did it. We’ve had a few people that have come in and they were like, ‘Oh, we had this idea!’ It’s a lot of work, and I think probably if [Stephanie and I] didn’t have each other, we probably wouldn’t have done it, either.”

Emch, a mother of three young boys with a girl on the way, said that the whole idea originally came about from using cloth diapers, one of the store’s most popular products.

“There have been a lot of moms in here that say that [their babies] have rashes,” Emch said. “They’ll switch to cloth and then they’re fine.”

In addition to the cloth diapers, Sweet Cheeks offers a variety of diaper bags, organic cotton clothing, 100-percent recycled plastic baby block toys, baby carriers and natural bug spray and sunscreen, among a host of other items. The store also provides a play area for kids while their parents are shopping, as well as gift registry for new moms and free gift-wrapping.

For more information about Sweet Cheeks, visit the store’s website at www.puresweetcheeksbaby.com.

Tags: Ann Arbor, Sweet Cheeks, Sylvania

This entry was posted on Monday, July 4th, 2011 at 11:52 am and is filed under Entrepreneurs.
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