For years, Cheryl Wells raised her oldest daughter, Ashlee, now 19 and a Lake Highlands High School graduate, and concentrated on teeth. She had attended school to be a lab-technician and had established a home-based business making crowns and bridges.
Then, in her mid-30s, she had a second baby daughter named Tatum. With 15 years between her two girls, Wells had all but forgotten what a hassle it can be to drive with an infant in the car.
“I’d be driving my oldest to the high school,” she says, “and I just really hated being in the car knowing my rear-facing car seat showed nothing for Tatum.”
She looked around for things that could keep her daughter entertained, but didn’t come up with anything that would appease her for long. So she cut some shapes out of colorful pieces of felt fabric and tried affixing them to her car’s ceiling using Velcro.
“It stuck kind of well, but I thought: “Well, something’s gotta work better,” she says.
She had already tried 20 or 30 different types of Velcro when, late one night, “this light bulb went off for me,” she says. She snipped a diaper tab off one of Tatum’s diapers, attached it to the handmade mobile and, at 3 a.m., took it out to her car.
It worked like a charm. “Those little diaper tabs stick to anything,” Wells says.
And, just like that, the groundwork to a second home-based business was born.
Now, four years later, Wells is launching Up and Away Inc. with five shareholders, including three neighbors. Dina and Dana Meeks, owners of DAM Creative, help design the company’s products – called Auto Mobiles – and Pamela Leutz helps with administrative duties.
During the development process, neighborhood mom Diane Crabtree was part of a focus group that tested the product. It has been a success, she says.
“My youngest, Catherine, sits back there and talks to it,” she says of the farm animal version, one of three. Also available are a garden scene and a glow-in-the-dark galaxy scene.
The brightly colored mobiles are made of craft foam, and they’re patented and ASTM-certified, meaning they meet government saftey standards. A 15,000-piece order is being released to the public this month.
For Wells, it’s a dream come true.
“It’s been a real challenge to see this to fruition, and it has definitely changed my life. It’s made me busier,” she says with a laugh. “But it’s also made me strive for more, made me get out of the box and learn.
“I feel like it’s my passion now to run this company,” she says.
To find out about Up & Away Inc. products, or to place an order, call 214-665-9414 or visit www.upandawayinc.net.
