Many Hoppy Returns

Westerly Native Breaks Through With Cuddly Kip Sacs

By BY LEE HOWARD
Published on 12/14/2003 Marketplace Magazine, a section within The Day newspaper.

What do whistling chimneys and cuddly kangaroos have in common? In the mind of Westerly native Theresa Roelke, each reverberates with the warmth of creativity, closeness and common experience. Whistling Chimneys, the poetically inclined old farmhouse that Theresa often used to pass in Quonochontaug, R.I., has become her euphonious company name, and Kip Sacs, fleece “pouches” in which kids can cuddle up with a pillow and an accompanying book that tells the story of a wayward kangaroo, is the product that the former Pine Point School teacher has been marketing for the past four years.

Now, with the well-known Hearthsong catalog, REI, Borders Books and Rugged Bear picking up Kip Sacs for the holidays as well as several small retail stores across the country (including Wise Owl, Polly and Woggs and Other Tiger Bookstore in Westerly), the soft and cozy lounging sacks seem destined to catch on.

“This year, I expect to sell about 3,000 units,” says Theresa. “Next year, I hope to sell tens of thousands. My husband (Ron, a partner in the business) was watching a CNN consumer report, and they said there's really no hot product for kids on the market. So why not Kip Sacs?”

If the kids and adults who gathered last month for a product demonstration at Stonington's Denison Pequotsepos Nature Center are any indication, Theresa's boundless enthusiasm and infectious optimism are sure to win her a KipSac following.

“It's like a pouch — you get all warm inside,” says Mike Gentile of Westerly, whose 41/2-year-old daughter, Kelli, enjoys her Kip Sac at home (Theresa is Kelli's aunt). “We like to get inside and watch TV.”

Gentile says “we” because he enjoys his adult-size Kip Sac (“kip” means nap in Australia) as much as the kids. This holiday, with the product now manufactured in bulk in Shanghai, Kip Sacs can be purchased only in the medium size (about 41/2 feet long), but Theresa plans to introduce an adult line of Kip Sacs as well as plush toy Kips (little kangaroos) and Kip friends in 2004.

“After four years of hard work, lots of rejection, tears and frustration, I'm finally beginning to see the light,” says Theresa. “And it all comes down to one word — perseverance.”

One of eight children, Theresa, whose maiden name was Fish, started making Kip Sacs in the living room of her Michigan home five years ago, her two small children hopping around as she cut the fabric. At first, she made the colorful fleece nap sacks as gifts for her own children and her many nieces and nephews, feeling as though the presents she had been buying before didn't have much meaning in the long run.

“I felt as though I was losing touch with what Christmas was really all about,” she recalls in a brief history of her company. “Christmas of 1999, I sent a big box of handmade Kip Sacs back home to my brother's house in Westerly, where my family had gathered for the holiday. When the box was opened, my nieces and nephews were thrilled with what they found inside. One of my sisters immediately called me and said, ‘Theresa, you've got to sell these things to gift shops. You should see these kids. They love them. What a great idea!”

After a couple months of thinking about it, Theresa decided to give the marketing of Kip Sacs a shot. But her background in education didn't prepare her for the business world. One of the biggest mistakes she made was relying on other people to help her get the business off the ground.

“When I finally realized that no one would ever care about my business more than I would, I began calling the shots,” she says. “And that's when things finally began to move the right direction.”

The first place to take a chance on Kip Sacs, as it turned out, was the gift shop at the Denison Nature Center, where Theresa's high school friend Chris Anderson serves as manager (and where, from 10 to 3 each Saturday this month, customers can get 15 percent off any purchase).

“For my 20th reunion from Westerly High, I donated a Kip Sac set for a raffle,” Theresa says. “Chris loved the product and offered to take them into her store.”

Other stores followed suit, but it was a rough go because she could never sell enough units to keep production costs, and therefore retail prices, down to what she considered a reasonable level.

Finally, she connected with Eco-mills of Portsmouth, N..H.., a company willing to manufacture Kip Sacs in large quantities. During the first meeting with the director of the Asian parent company, she talked about her children's stories, her drawings and how she envisioned a book to accompany each child-size sack. He encouraged her to go forward.

So Theresa wrote, illustrated and published her first book, “A Pouch for Kip,” which tells the story of a little kangaroo who becomes separated from his mother, gets hit by a car, lands with a nice family and winds up sleeping in a sack the children make for him.

“I think the character evolving from the product may be every bit as popular as the product itself,” she says.

Theresa says a recent visit to a Borders bookstore left her feeling that the whole bundle — which includes the book and a mini-pouch and mini-pillow for a favorite stuffed animal, all rolled together with a travel pillow inside the Kip Sac and tied off with a festive satin bow — makes for a powerful marketing package. The gift set runs $59.95 in the Hearthsong catalog, but can be purchased anywhere from $49.95 to $59.95, she adds.

For now, the book cannot be purchased separately, but that could change when Theresa comes out with other stories in her “Kip, the Little Roo” series.

Before she created Kip, Theresa penned another story, “The Kip Sac Lady from Maine,” still unpublished. It tells of a woman who fashioned colorful sacks from the finest New England fleece and tried to peddle them with little success to the cranky shopkeepers in a town named Cape Fogged. But when she got the idea of tucking a story under the ribbon of her Kip Sacs and giving a few away as gifts, the woman formerly known as The Crazy Kip Sac Lady became known as The Clever Kip Sac Lady.

“After all,” the story concludes, “she really was quite clever in knowing that we never outgrow our love for stories ... and the need to snuggle.”