Episode 168: Is Your Mattress Toxic? with Arin Schultz from Naturepedic

Disclaimer: Transcripts were generated automatically and may contain inaccuracies and errors.

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Welcome to the kids sleep Show podcast where we dive into the magical world of sleep and all things parenting. Join us as we embark on a journey filled with expert advice, practical tips and heartwarming stories that will transform your little ones into sleep superheroes and empower you to navigate the beautiful chaos of parenting. I’m your host, Courtney Zentz, and I’m on a mission to change how the world views sleep and provide accessible sleep coaching resources for all families to build healthy sleep habits in their home for children and adults of all ages. As an award winning speaker, author and pediatric sleep expert, myself and my team of consultants work intimately with families around the world to teach healthy sleep habits to children and adults. I believe wholeheartedly that sleep is the foundation for which a happy home is built. So let’s sleep together.

Hey everyone.

Welcome to this week’s episode of the Kids sleep show. I

am so excited to be joined today by Aaron Schultz. He is the Vice President of Sales and Marketing for naturpedic, organic mattresses. So I want to take a minute and allow Aaron to introduce himself and talk a little bit about his history, because I have been working with naturpedic to share education on mattresses and a lot of different stuff that new parents and seasoned parents may not know. And it’s really great to have him on the podcast today to talk about this, and you’re going to find it pretty insightful. So let me give a minute to allow Aaron to properly introduce himself, and then we’re going to dive into all things

mattresses. Well, it’s really exciting to be here today. Courtney, I, you know, I love educating parents. You know, I’m a father of four, and anytime I can impart any wisdom to parents, especially new parents, to make it a little bit easier. I’ve trialed and errored many, many times with four children, so I’ve seen it and done it. And, you know, in my decade here at naturepedic, working for an organic company, has really been eye opening from, you know, the scientists we’ve had here to the advocacy groups that they’re doing great work in environmental and children’s space especially, has really opened my eyes up to, you know, the dangers that are in everyday products, especially stuff that you know around your kids all day, every day. Well. And I think

it’s interesting, you mentioned that, because when I got pregnant, right? Pre pregnancy, I used to drink fresca, and it’s not a shot to fresca, but like they said, you can’t have aspartame when you’re pregnant. And so I didn’t have fresca anymore because it has aspartame. And you start Googling, like, well, what is aspartame? It’s like, well, wait a minute, if I can’t have it when I’m pregnant, why would I want it when I’m not pregnant? You know, you start to go down this rabbit hole. And I think a lot of time is expecting parents, you kind of go down this rabbit hole because you’re trying to make because you’re trying to make sure that your child’s nursery and their mattress and the cleaning products and the toys you buy and all the things that they eat are good for them, right? Which naturepedic, and I feel like it just is my, you know, spirit animal, because your mission as a company, both in the things you do to help support a better world, but also in the products you’re building really feed into that mission of like, oh my gosh, parents don’t even realize, like, what is in a crib mattress. So, you know, I want to take a second to kind of start with the crib mattress, particularly, because if there’s one thing you need in the new nursery when you have a baby coming, it’s a crib mattress, right? And so when parents are out there and they’re like, Well, what am I supposed to buy? What does it look like? What you know, nature Pedic, you hear the term organic, right? So you’ve been around for quite some time now as an organic Mattress Company, so I want you to start with a little bit of the history, but that term now has such a different meaning, I think, to new parents. And then, why, right? And what the ingredients are that make it so important when, especially when you’re building a, you know, a registry, you want to pick the the products that are going to be the best for, you know, for your child. So start with a little bit around, you know, I would say the history of naturepedic. And then talk about, like, the crib mattresses, specifically, because you even mentioned it when we were chatting how passionate you are about what the quality of the product is. But more importantly, why? And you have four boys, and you want them sleeping on something that’s great. So why, right? Why did we even start naturepedic? Because the story is pretty interesting.

Well, I, you know, I, I’ve started the last few years, because it’s very relevant of you know, with an atropic story, it doesn’t we’ve been around for 21 years now, which we’re very proud of. That fact, you know, any company really to make it past year five is a huge win. But 21 years, and we’ve won some very big accolades just this year alone, which stands to the testament of us as a company. But our story kind of originates about, you know, over 50 years ago where, you know, Barry chick, our founder, he was actually in college, and he was trying to decide his major. And this goes all the way back to 1970 in Cleveland. And for those are not aware, we have a river in Cleveland called the college. Cuyahoga River, and it actually caught on fire in 1970 water does not catch on fire. Water puts out fire. And what had happened was, all the way through the industrial revolution in downtown Cleveland, all these factories are just spitting all these horrible chemicals and dumping all of this waste into the Cuyahoga River, which flows right into Lake Erie. And to this day, in 2024 they only recommend that you eat fish twice a year, only twice a year out of Lake Erie, because of the high, high mercury levels out of there. And it’s the one of the only Great Lakes where there’s not allowed commercial fishing. So it’s gonna take a very, very, very long time for any of that to actually be rectified. But that was kind of the catalyst for Barry to get into the environmental world. And he started a company not too long after that, with his wife Reggie, called gem testing. And they were doing soil testing all throughout the Cleveland area to make sure that you know where they were going to be building homes, new malls, stores, whatever that the soil was, you know, up to par and not harmful to consumers and to, you know, people living there. And in that time, too him and Reggie actually started the first organic farming co op in Cleveland in the 1970s as well. So we’ve been doing organic for a very long time, longer than I’ve been alive. And it’s not just some fly by night company where we’re hopping on some organic trend. We were kind of doing it when it wasn’t cool, and now there’s a lot more companies jumping into the mix, which arguably so we are very happy about just because it’s it’s the way the world should be. It’s the way how it kind of used to be before, you know, the industrial kickoff of things after, you know, World War Two, when, you know, 1000s of chemicals were introduced after World War Two, and to, you know, pesticides and all those things and so, you know, the more the merrier at this point, because it just makes the world that much better of a place, and makes people that much healthier. And, you know, there’s more than enough business to go going around, and we’re just excited to be a part of it. But, yeah, I mean, why organic mattresses, really is the question. You know, a lot of people can get organic food, you can get organic lotion, you can get, you know, organic clothing, for that matter, just so, but with organic mattresses, it’s the same thing as organic clothing in the sense that you’re putting your body on it for, you know, hopefully eight hours a night, but even more so for your baby, where they’re getting 10 to 16 hours a day on that mattress. And, you know, we didn’t set out to be a certified organic Mattress Company. It’s generally when you take out all of those bad chemicals and all those bad materials, all you’re left with is organic materials. So, you know, that’s how nature, kind of PETA cut its kind of inception from, you know, a little mom and pop operation into inside of Barry’s garage to 21 years later, we’ve got, you know, brick and mortar stores across the country. We have, you know, hundreds of employees, and it’s really to the consumers doing their own research and us trying to help them, you know, educate them on on who we are as a company well.

And I think what’s interesting is, there’s this term chemical elevation, right? There’s 85,000 synthetic chemicals in the US, frankly, which many are banned outside of the US, right? So think in the US here, if you’re listening like we’re a little behind in maybe some of the things that I as a parent and a consumer would probably want to see banned. But I mean, you can use terms on products, and parents don’t even realize, like, what their kids are ingesting or inhaling, you know? And sometimes it’s by accident, you know, I mean, and I think mattresses is a great example of that, and why organic or non toxic are, like, really important, because there’s 85,000 chemicals, right? And so I want you to talk about chemical elevation and like, what that means when it comes to mattresses, and why it matters that a mattress is non toxic and potentially also organic, right?

Yeah. So, I mean, there are, you know, over 100 different chemicals that go inside of a mattress, and there’s the old adage that children are like sponges, and it couldn’t be more true for babies. They’re literally the, you know, the second they’re out of the womb, they’re taking in every single thing that’s in their environment, and it’s going to affect their development throughout their entire life. So you know the fact that that baby’s going to be on that crib mattress for 10 to 16 hours a day, you want it to be the safest thing possible, speaking from a parenting perspective of you know, four kids, especially for new time parents. You I think a lot of people don’t realize where you’re getting, like, you know, over 100 gifts. Sometimes on your registry, you maybe use about five or six of them. In all honesty, you’re just trying to sleep and trying to make it to the next day. So, you know, getting a good crib mattress, getting a good car seat, having a nice, uh. Safe crib those are all very important things for baby, and those are really the only thing that matters. I mean, I know a lot of people want to go for esthetic, but spend your money there. Spend your money on the things that really matter. And with a crib mattress, especially, you know, the chemicals that go into there are endless. I mean, just some of the few. You know, a lot of times polyurethane foam is using crib mattresses. It’s still used today. It’s one of the major components in a lot of standard crib mattresses, but polyurethane foam uses a lot of flame retardant chemicals, and flame retardant chemicals are actually known carcinogens. So you know to knowingly put your baby on that. Now, a lot of people, when you’re given the choice, would you rather put your baby on, you know, that, or organic materials. It’s not a hard choice to make, if you really, you know, and price point wise, we’re not that far off from a lot of other competitors and people who are using those polyurethane foams. But also, you know, waterproofing, waterproofing is a big one. Obviously, you want a Waterproof Crib Mattress. Babies throw up, they sneeze, they have blowouts. I have four boys. They’re disgusting and but you know, you want that waterproof mattress, and what we do differently in nature, Pedic is a lot of traditional waterproof you can do waterproof curve mattress through different ways. You can use vinyl, or you can use perfluorinated compounds and vinyl, just like you would see like in an old like diner or something like that, they use vinyl seats. Why vinyl is not a great thing for a baby to be sleeping on, is vinyl is the same thing as is the white PVC pipe you have in your house, and they add a chemical there called phthalates to it, and that makes it soft and pliable. If you ever see a really old Crib Mattress starts to crack in the corners, that is, it’s starting to off gas and getting to the end of its life and starting to return back to its normal state, which it wants to get back to a hard state. So that’s why it cracks. The problem with phthalates is, your baby breathes that in, and they’re actually endocrine disruptors, and they’re known to cause reproductive problems in boys. And the other way to waterproof mattresses, again with perfluorinated compounds is These are also known carcinogens. Anytime they, you know, spray your carpet or you have a water resistant best thing to do, even without crib mattresses, stay away from anything that says water resistant. It’s bound to be sprayed to death with perfluorinated compounds. And whether it’s, you know, a jacket or a crib mattress that it’s sprayed with concert cancer causing chemicals. So but we at nature Peter, we actually use non GMO sugar cane as a derivative for our waterproofing. We are the only Crib Mattress Company to do that. So we’re constantly, you know, finding better ways to innovate and make things as safe as physically possible. And Barry was very much a stickler for, you know, we wanted to do things the right way and a better way. So that’s, that’s how we all, you know, we came to be. And, you know, said, there’s also a whole other bunch of chemicals too long for me to enlist, but just some to call out, especially that Courtney and I are speaking of earlier, arsenic. Everyone is heard of arsenic at one point in time. It is a known poison. They use those on some crib mattresses out there. Antimony is another horrible chemical out there. If you do some research on it, those are in a quite a lot of crib mattresses out there. How the industry hasn’t changed in 2024 with everything else going out there, is mind boggling to me. But we don’t use any of those chemicals whatsoever in our product well.

And I think what’s cool is, like the innovation side, right? Like Barry has innovated consistently, right? And, and we’ll talk about the difference between, like, a lullaby Earth and a naturopathic and naturopathic baby. But like, even how you seal the mattress, right? Like, usually it’s glue and adhesives, all of these things your baby is soaking in, your child is soaking in, right? Those products omit things you don’t see that they are a sponge to right? Naturepedic, it’s done with heat, right? Like the ceiling is, yeah,

glues, traditionally are, you know, skin and lung irritants. And we don’t use any adhesives in our products. We actually use a machine that actually heats the heads up to a 1200 degrees, and it actually creates a seamless design. So it’s also, you know, makes it waterproof, and we have to use any of those extra chemicals,

which is like, why isn’t everybody doing this? It’s so cool. I

mean, I’m glad we love nature peak. But it’s like, oh my gosh, you know? And like, we talk about, like, so waterproofing, right? Like, you have a baby, they’re gonna have a blowout. You have a three year old that gets a stomach bug, they’re gonna vomit all over the place. Like, expect it. Sorry, you know it’s you’re not your kid’s gonna puke or poop or both, right? And so if you’re my husband, you will puke. And my husband will puke as the baby is puking, which is always great because he has a sensitive gag reflex. Yeah,

so any of two you’re cleaning up for, but

when you talk about cleaning a mattress, right? Like, I’ve seen videos of other mattress companies where it’s like, okay to clean your mattress, spray with the hose outside and then let it air dry for 24 hours. Like, well, that’s really great, except, uh, it’s two o’clock in the morning and I don’t have an extra Crib Mattress laying around. Around, and you’re telling me, if I put that mattress in too soon to the crib, and it’s still a little wet, now I have the potential for black mold, which I do know I don’t want my kid breathing in, like, what, you know, whoa. Like, really, these are still conversations that, like, people just aren’t even abreast to right? And, you know, you look at what you’re doing with naturepedic for both lullaby Earth and naturepedic, which we’ll talk about, the difference in a minute. It’s breathable and it’s waterproof. Like, why does that matter? I mean, I, you know a lot more about the mattress level of waterproofing and that, you know, the black mold side, than I do, but it’s a problem, right? It’s a problem that parents don’t think about.

Yeah, you know, that’s one thing you know Barry is. I mean, the man doesn’t sleep. He might be a robot. I’m convinced of that, but because he’s always innovating, constantly thinking of new ways to do things. And, you know, we breathable became much more of a topic in for parents in the last, you know, five to six years. And, you know, we wanted to do it better, not just organic. We wanted to do it better. So what we set out to do was still have a nice, safe, breathable surface, but also make that. We didn’t want the mattress itself to be breathable, because, to your point earlier, with blowouts and throwing up and everything, if that baby throws up inside of that mattress, and even if it’s a washable mattress, if you forget to do it, it only takes nine days for mold to grow. So now your baby is breathing in all of that black mold, and it’s not how we wanted to create our product. So we have our same waterproof design on the mattress, and now we have a waterproof, washable, breathable cover, and now that allows at the middle of the night, you know, your baby has one of those blowouts, you can actually pop that cover off, throw right in the hamper, put a sheet back down, put your baby right back, back to bed. You don’t throw that mattress in the shower. You don’t have to worry about wiping anything down. You can get some of that valuable sleep again for both of you, and you know, not have to interrupt everyone’s cycle in the middle of the night and just get right back to bed so and not have to worry about any of those breathing hazards,

yeah, which I think is great, because it’s the breathability, which is better airflow, right? You know, we were talking a little bit about that before, before we got on, like, at these Prego expos that I’ve been doing with Emily, who’s on the naturopathic team, she’s loving, like, the moms are pregnant, they’re coming up and, like, you know, kind of looking at the mattress to try to, like, see, like, is it really breathable? Like, was that, you know, what? So it’s just an interesting like, I think again, when you know better, you do better. And I think as the education gets out, which is obviously what I try to do with the kids, sleep show, podcast, like, make choices based on, like, good choice of ingredients, but also practical use, which your kid’s gonna have a blowout. And you can buy an extra cover and have it so that when you know there is a blowout, you take it off to your point, throw it in the wash, put the new breathable cover on, throw a beautiful sheet on. I’m hoping my husband gets me the nature Pedic king size, you know, hot ones. They’re so beautiful, like at the expos. You know, we’re like touching and feeling, but it’s quality and it’s comfort, right? Your your baby’s going to sleep on that for a long time, right? Like the mattresses are two stages, so you get the whole first year hard, flat surface, and then a year later, or somewhere between one and two, when the pediatrician tells you, you flip the mattress and it’s a little bit softer. There’s longevity in the product. And they’re not $9 million you know what I mean? Like, your prices are comparable to the traditional mattress line, whether you want lullaby, Earth or naturepedic Baby, and they’re both non toxic and amazing with breathable, washable covers, you know? So maybe talk with folks the difference. Maybe they’ve heard of lullaby earth and didn’t realize that that was a part of naturepedic, and you have naturpedic baby like, chat with me about the difference, right? Because we talk about this a lot with new parents, right? You’ve got lullaby Earth and then the naturpedic and naturpedic Baby brands. So

what’s the difference? Yeah,

so Barry was, you know, he was always a proponent of getting our message out to all the stores. That’s what led to naturepedics, you know, initial success. And he used to go out and, do you know, I said all of our store trainings with store associates and business owners and everything. And he was kind of a road warrior in our first, you know, 10 years of naturepedic, and we was doing a training at a store. It was actually a bye bye baby store, and there was a mom who was listening in on his training. And my Barry’s training is a little bit different than mine. I i Usually my, I give people the dime store pitch for nature Pedic. It’s usually about like 1015 minutes. Barry will literally stand there for two hours and tell you why should buy naturopathic but it’s all very, very informative information. By the end of it, there is no you cannot walk away from that conversation thinking anything else than my baby needs to sleep on an atropic So this mom listened Barry’s whole entire speech, and by the end of it, you know, she was a single mom, and she could not afford to buy one of her crib mattresses. It was just one of those. She just could not with everything else she had to buy, she could not so Barry, being a, you know, a very good person, just gifted her one. But what he did is he came back to nature Pedic and with his two sons, Jeff and Jason, who are also founders of our business. Uh, he told him, like, listen, we need to come up with something a little more economical for for parents. It can’t be organic, obviously, just because the overall cost of organic cotton and all of that. But, you know, let’s come up with something that’s, you know, a decent price point, but still a nice, safe product. So we came up with lullaby Earth in 2009 and what we did is we took all the organic cotton out and we replaced it with polyester. Obviously not a certified organic product, but it’s still a nice, safe product. And it we use the same non GMO waterproofing on that. And for our breathable model, we use the same design where the cover cover is washable and removable and waterproof as well, which

I think is awesome. So you have basically lullaby Earth, which is non toxic, breathable, washable, two stage mattress, then you have naturepedic, organic, non toxic, breathable, washable, right? So when people say, like, what’s the difference? That’s, you know, that’s the major difference. And I think, you know, giving people options is helpful, and to know that they can make an educated choice on like, which one is best for their family, but still give them a safe option is so amazing, you know, and kids sleep on these for a long time like so naturapedic doesn’t just do baby, right? You’ve got traditional sized mattresses as well. From a nature Pedic standpoint, there’s stores popping up all over the country. We were chatting about that because you’re looking at one here, which would be great in the Philadelphia area, potentially. I’ll keep my fingers crossed. But people can go in and can kind of see and understand the difference, right? And I believe you carry all of the naturepedic crib mattresses in store as well. Are they in every store? Like, if parents really wanted to, like, kind of touch one? Where can you find one to touch one if you’re not near a Prego Expo?

Yeah, we do. So we in every single naturepedic store. We do have our most popular models, so people can go in, especially our breathable ones. You can go in and touch them and feel them and experience in the store. We do have a lot of retail partners, where in every Creighton kids store, where every Pottery Barn Kids store, we’re a few Restoration Hardware stores as well, where they have a baby and kids department. And we’re also in all the bye bye baby stores that are up and around that are kind of Reformed again, up in the Northeast. But, you know, it definitely yes, we have a full product line now that we we just had customers asking, like, we’d love your crib mattresses. You know, you guys need to do more. So, you know, we did. We started in kids beds in 2011 and it just, you know, ballooned from there and, or no, I’m sorry, 2008 2008 we have, we have over, you know, 200 products now for me to keep track of dates. But yeah, 2008 and it just, it’s been, it’s been tremendous for us, not in it the same thoughtful design went into those kids beds, where we have a two in one mattress, which I’m very proud of. We still win awards to this day, and is speaking to, you know, a father of four. I think there’s something inherently with children until about the age of like, I don’t know, eight to 10, Courtney, I know you have some older kids. My kids just sit up in bed and throw up wherever they’re at so which is always super fun in the middle of the night as they get older. But our waterproof bed is great because not only for the the throwing up factor, but potty training as well. One side is waterproof with the same waterproofing use for a crib mattresses. You can actually flip it over when they’re when they get done potty training, and have the wherewithal to get up in the middle of the night to go all the night, to go throw up somewhere else. And it’s quilted so they actually get a traditional mattress feel. So it’s we took that two in one, two stage design that we have for our crew mattresses for the baby and toddler ones, and we applied that to our kids beds as well. So you know. And then we’ve got, you know, adult beds. Our adult beds are. We recognize that not everybody is the same, you know, shape, size, even couples. I mean, you can have somebody who’s 411 who’s with somebody who’s six foot four, and they’re not going to sleep the same. So we came up with our HP at EOS mattress in 2014 and it’s fully customizable. The whole bed actually unzips. So, you know, if you want to have firm on your side, and your partner likes plush on theirs, we can actually, you can pull the layers out and swap the layers out. My wife, when she was pregnant, I wish, I think she wished we had an EOS at the time ourselves, because it’s great if you’re pregnant. I don’t need to mansplain how hard pregnancy is. My marketing team loves when I do that. But when you get into your second or third trimester, like your body’s different. You sleep. You know it’s harder to get comfortable. So my wife traditionally like the firm mattress. And what would have been nice during that time period, especially in our third trimester is we could have unzipped the bed, swapped in plush layers for her to get more comfortable. She did had, like a she was, like, I was like an eagle’s nest of pillows she had created for herself. But that, that is, you know, an area where we can really help out in that journey, where, and then after pregnancy, when you’re, you know. Getting back to normal. You wanted to have that firm bed again, you can unzip the whole thing, swap your firm layer back in, and you have the bed that you had right before then, and not have to swap out a whole other mattress, you know. And later on down the line, if you know, you want to swap out layers or whatever, you never have to buy an entire bed ever again. You can every single component of that mattress you can have replaced on a one off basis, which is

so cool, and longevity is just beautiful, and you’re not breathing in all the toxic chemicals, which is good, you know, as parents, like just a shout out to the EWG right? So naturapedic and lullaby Earth, but naturapedic, as a company, is the first ever to be certified with the EWG stamp. And I will tell you before I knew that I have the EWG app on my phone, and my husband thinks I’m nuts because I go to the store and I’m like, not buying that toxic, not buying that toxic, right? The EWG stands for Environmental Working Group for those people that are not familiar with what that app is. But you can get the app right in the app store, and you can go to the store and actually scan products, and it’ll tell you, like, hey, there’s a lot of fragrances in that you might not want to, you know, you might not want to use it. I actually switched our detergent a couple of weeks ago because I was doing my dad’s laundry, and he’s aging, so there’s a lot of stuff going on there. And I’m like, I better get something that helps, you know, purify things a bit, right? And I didn’t think anything of it. And then I’m like, Oh my gosh, I’m itching. Like, what is this? And we had always used, like, a free and clear but it was just easier to, like, throw these little things in, and I like, what I got rid of it. I was like, we’re done with this. We’re back to what we were, Dad, sorry. Like, here’s some essential oils on your stuff. But it’s like, crazy, because then I, like, went out and scanned what I was using on the app, and I was like, Oh my gosh. Like, it’s going right in the garbage, you know. But I think that app is cool for parents, because there’s a lot of resources in it. So just for the helpful tidbit, it’s EWG Environmental Working Group, but you guys are the first mattress to get EWG verified, which is so cool. You

know, we’re, we’re very excited about that. I mean, just because of the

legacy that EWG had and how, you know, much it resonates with consumers, because they they really go to the nth degree to make sure that the product that you are putting on those shelves meets their high standards of what should not be in that product. And I mean, they don’t mess around. You got to, you know, be able to prove everything you know. And luckily, not even just with EWG, but I think the industry in general, for well, any industry, you got to start showing receipts. And that’s what EWG was helping us do, is, you know, again, becoming the first verified one where, you know, there’s not a lot of mattresses out there that can really meet that standard now, I mean, there’s, there’s probably a handful, if best, at best, that can really meet the EWG standard of what would mean a, you know, nice, safe mattress for you and your family,

yeah, which I love. So, I mean, I think in, you know, closing for for families like first, do some research, right? If you’re expecting, here’s why you would want to take a look at what naturepedic is doing, both within the lullaby Earth brand and within, you know, the naturepedic baby brand, right, for both your baby and you know yourself, if it’s due time to to get yourself a comfortable mattress. But, I mean, I think when you know better, you do better, and that’s the whole purpose of this podcast, right? And spending some time with you, Aaron, because you know you’ve got four kids, you’re you’re also coming at it with the perspective of a dad who, you know, is also trying to raise a family, to to all be around, you know, with longevity and health and, you know. So I think the mission is just so important. As the Vice President of Sales and Marketing, you’re kind of walking the walk, but you’re also talking the talk, because it’s important for your family, you know. So I don’t know. I mean, I feel so, so similar to all of the different things that naturpedic does, which is why I love the brand. So, I mean, I think, first and foremost, where can people find you? So there’s a lot of store locations. You can kind of check out if there is a Natura Pedic store and you want to check one out by you, but if not, they can find you where.

Yeah. So we have, let’s say we have all of our own nature, Pedic stores, we have a lot more planned, especially for next year too. We hope to be in 40 locations by the end of or the beginning of 2026 so we’ve got 25 under our belt now, which is really exciting, but we have a lot of independent retailers that are great partners of naturapedic in almost every single major American city, and especially for crib mattresses. You can find us on it, Pottery Barn, kids Creighton, kids stores. You can find us on their websites. We’re also with target and bye, bye, baby and baby list. Baby list has been a great partner for us. Big

registry one, right? Like people are like, where are you registered baby list? You know,

it’s great. I mean, they’ve built a tremendous business, and they’re, they’re great at curating what like. They won’t let any product on their website, which is great. We really appreciate that. And they really do their own research too. So and

social wise, right? You’ve got a new handle, which is naturepedic Baby, and we’ll put all these in the show notes too, but you’ve got the. Pedic brand, naturepedic baby, and then also lullaby Earth. So, you know, as we were talking, people now understand the difference of, you know what those brands are, and all the great stuff you’re doing, and the fact you can get the mattresses and the crib sheets, which, again, I’m holding on to, holding on to hope for Santa Claus, you know, but it’s just, they’re just beautiful products, like they’re all made with lobby of dog beds. You know, I was joking, my dog sleeps on like this hardwood at the beach house, you know. And last weekend we were down there like, hey, to get you a dog bed, giving your dogs that comfortable, just the comfortable sleep environment, you know what I mean as well. That’s also non toxic, yeah, I

think a lot of people don’t realize that with with, you know, it’s a living thing, and they’re also susceptible to, you know, their environment, to what it’s eating, to what it’s sleeping on. And we’ve had a lot of consumers that were really excited when we launched dog beds, just because they they care about their pets just as much as sometimes, their own, you know, children in some instances. And you know, that’s why we don’t really want to get off our mission too much like we’re going to stay within our lane, and what we do is very good, and what we focus on. So, you know, that’s why we want to introduce as much as we can into the sleep space, as much as possible. We’ve got furniture that we’re going to be launching, or bedroom furniture we’re going to be launching next year, which is really exciting. We’ve come up with a lot of thoughtful designs that are, you know, within the naturopathic thought process of creating something that’s safe and non toxic for you and your family. So yeah, we’re excited to see that in the new year. Awesome.

I love it. I appreciate you jumping jumping on the podcast today. And if you have any furniture designs that offer back rubs on demand, just let me know, because I’ll be the first one on the list for that.

It’s phase two. It’s phase two.

I appreciate it. Aaron, thanks so much for tuning in. And everybody, I will put all of the relevant links out in the show notes. And I thank Erin for spending some time today with us. And I hope you check out lullaby, earth and nature Pedic, because they are awesome products. Thank

you, everybody. One

more thing before you go, did you know we offer the industry’s first and only sleep coaching membership program? We want you to come for the sleep and stay for the community for just $47 a month, you’ll have access to the entire library for newborn, infant and toddler sleep training, weekly live coaching calls with myself and members of my team, plus a robust community where you can ask questions 24/7 and get answers to your Biggest sleep and parenting questions. Jump over to tinytransitions.com forward, slash, sleepsteps to Learn More You

One more thing before you go, did you know We offer the industry’s first and only sleep coaching membership program. We want you to come for the sleep and stay for the community for just $47 a month, you’ll have access to the entire library for newborn, infant and toddler sleep training, weekly live coaching calls with myself and members of my team, plus a robust community where you can ask questions 24/7, and get answers to your biggest sleep and parenting questions. Jump over to tinytransitions.com forward slash sleep steps to learn more.