By Elly Cosgrove | April 18, 2021 at 7:38 PM EDT – Updated April 18 at 7:38 PM
WILMINGTON, N.C. (WECT) – It’s the classic story of any entrepreneur: you see a problem, so you fix it. That’s exactly what parents Emmanuel and Amanda Legbeti did when they realized the potential dangers of glider chairs.
With three young children at home, safety is everything for their family.
“As a mom of three I know you literally can’t be everywhere all the time,” Amanda said. “I’ve safety-guarded the doorknobs, I’ve safety-guarded the light outlets in the wall.”
So when Emmanuel injured his finger in one of the family’s glider chairs, they decided to take matters into their own hands.
“I was reading a book and actually tried to move, scooch forward so I could see the book and my finger, this one, actually got caught in it and it was pretty bad, took the nail off,” Emmanuel said.
The parents combined Emmanuel’s engineering background and Amanda’s creativity to find a solution for the many potential pinch points on glider chairs. After doing some research, they found they were not the only ones with a smashed finger.
“When we looked [online] we realized it wasn’t just us. It was a problem and hundreds of kids and people had pinched their hands in glider chairs,” Amanda said.
So they got to work creating a product to keep people safe: the Glider Skirt.
The product safety-proofs the chairs with a pinch guard underneath a tailored skirt.
Amanda and Emmanuel spent thousands of hours over several years to perfect the design so that it could fit on different styles and sizes of gliders.
“We spent a lot of time engineering this piece so it fits universally,” Amanda said. “So the most of our time was spent designing the patent.”
The parents said they went to a number of baby stores and daycares taking measurements of all the different types of gliders to ensure their product could fit them all.
“It took us years to get something tailored and beautiful,” Amanda said. “Of course you want it to look beautiful. You’re spending time in that room and you want it to look just as nice as the rest of your room. You know you’re getting the perfect curtains and the perfect crib skirt and the perfect crib skirt.”
They said one of the most important benefits of the Glider Skirt is that it’s affordable than investing in a fully upholstered glider chair.
“We have three kids, and so when we were younger we’re not going to afford a $500, $1,000 chair. So we bought these [gliders] and they’re affordable,” Emmanuel said. “With Glider Skirt what you also have is you can have the safety piece that comes with it, you have more flexibility and style because you can now actually take the skirt on and off with different styles, and it’s why more affordable than when you take a Glider Skirt and a classic glider chair combined, that’s way more affordable than buying a fully upholstered glider chair.”
The full set is just under $70 and the chair skirt alone costs just under $55.
The parents started selling the skirts late last year and have already sold thousands. They said they have seen interest from everyone from young families to grandparents and even daycares.
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