Baby Bling Bows

The first Baby Bling bows sat in a basket by a boutique's cash register. Summer Harris's mother worked at the shop, and it let them keep the bows near checkout. They sold out every day, and before long the Pleasant Grove company was in the wholesale bow business, which Harris says happened fast.

The problem she set out to fix was color. When her daughter was born, Harris could not find a bow in anything but the typical soft colors. "I couldn't even get a good red unless it was the holidays," she says on the company's site. Red, it turns out, was seasonal.

Orders grew after a team of sales reps got the bows into Nordstrom, and Harris hired friends and family to sew. Soon there was a waiting list of their friends and family who wanted in. Fox 13 reported in 2017 that the bows are handmade by women in Utah, and its product pages still say each headband is hand sewn and tied by women in the local community.

The Classic Knot is the one most people know. Baby Bling calls itself the original creator of the soft nylon knot headband, a band with no seams that measures 6 inches across before stretching and 17 inches fully stretched. The company also leaves the stitching on the knot visible rather than cutting a hole to turn the fabric inside out.

Not every material is local. The tulle on the Tulle FAB comes from South Korea, its product page says, while the headband fabric is made in the USA. In the company's own Q&A, Harris says overseas factories began copying Baby Bling designs as the baby bow market filled up. Her answer has been to keep the sewing with women in her own community, the same arrangement that started with a basket by a register.