Love to Dream swaddling suit makes Krawchuk a bundle

Hana-Lia Krawchuk solved her baby’s sleep issues and created a multi-million-dollar business in the process.

Hana-Lia Krawchuk found a solution to her son’s sleepless nights and now sells the patented swaddling suit worldwide. Picture: Hollie Adams

A new parent would pay just about anything to get a baby to sleep after weeks of sleepless nights.

Hana-Lia Krawchuk certainly felt that way, and in doing something about it, created a multi-million-dollar business.

The former fashion designer couldn’t get her son, Elijah, to sleep through the night, because he kept trying to pry his hands free from the cloth he was swaddled in. At the kitchen table, with needle and thread, she stitched a swaddling suit with sleeves raised above the head.

It worked like a charm, so she stitched two more for a couple of friends. “They rang me and told me their children slept through the night, and I remember saying ‘this is it. This is a winner’,” Ms Krawchuk says.

Some winner. That business, Love to Dream, now ships more than 750,000 units a year and has grown at 35 per cent a year for the past three years, with exports to 45 countries.

Love to Dream is making a bundle out of giving babies (and parents) a good night’s sleep.

In recognition of its success it has been identified as a “Business of Tomorrow”, a new project from Westpac aimed at nurturing and promoting the next generation of business leaders. In all, 200 businesses were awarded from nearly 2000 entries, with the top 20 (including Love to Dream) receiving $100,000 worth of consulting services, a study tour to China and the US and access to a mentor. Ms Krawchuk will be assigned fashion icon Carla Zampatti.

David Lindberg, chief executive of Westpac’s business bank, says it is how the company wants to give back in its 200th year.

“We want to be a 200-year-old start-up supporting small dreams and making it a big reality,” Lindberg says. “We chose a broad range from a lot of industries, some of them are new, some of them are old, small are small, some big. But we thought all of them had the potential to change future business in the country.”

Business has always been in Ms Krawchuk’s blood. Her Russian parents landed penniless in New Zealand in 1976 after fleeing anti-Semitic persecution. They started a chocolate factory there, growing to five stores before selling up and settling in Sydney, where they ran a successful wholesale business.

The young Hana was intimately involved with life inside a small business.

“They had a policy that there were never any closed doors, so we learned about the good, the bad and the ugly,” she says.

After seven years working in menswear following her fashion degree, Ms Krawchuk quit, deciding that it was time to pursue her original dream of haute couture.

“The next day I found out I was pregnant,” she says.

Baby Elijah’s arrival was not only the inspiration for the clothes but propelled her into the far more friendly world of babies wear. “Everyone’s a parent who owns a store,” she says. “I’d go in with Elijah in tow, and people would be happy to meet you.”

In one of her first meetings, a chain of stores took 400 units, before she had even finished the first consignment. Two weeks later the chain asked for more.

It also revealed the power of word of mouth. If one mother declared her child slept through the night, others would request them from retailers.

“My husband and I did a feasibility study early on, working out that if I sold 10,000 a year, I could supplement my old income,” she says. “We sold that in less than six months.”

Love to Dream products are already popular internationally, with 20 per cent of sales coming from the US. South Koreans are “huge advocates for the brand”, according to Ms Krawchuk.

What’s more, Love to Dream owns the patent for swaddling clothes with elevated arms, meaning she can repel copycat brands.

It should mean a business with plenty of longevity, which is a good thing seeing as baby Elijah, now nine, is showing signs of his family’s business acumen.

“Do you know what Elijah said to me? ‘Because you had the idea because of me, I think I am entitled to 50 per cent’. I told him, ‘you gotta work for it buddy’.”