| Four Kitsap-area McBride’s Hallmark stores as well as one in University Place, recently introduced a line of new product from Silverdale-based The BABYDATER Company. The products include BABYDATER, a nicely designed pregnancy calculator and record keeper, a 10-month pregnancy calendar and Counting the Days calendars — one a 10-month pregnancy calendar and diary and the other for the “baby’s first year.”
Although this is the company’s first retail venue, it has sold various products for years to companies like OSHKOSH, Nicolet Biomedical and Quidel Diagnostics. Owners Russel and Tina Thomsen operate the company out of their Silverdale home, and engage several creative helpers including renowned artist Elena Kucharik, the creator of the Care Bears, and an artist for dozens of children’s books.
Thomsen is a retired doctor who had delivered more than 4,000 babies and has done extensive medical work, co-authored numerous papers and books, and has worked with medical needs around the world, including Russia and the former Soviet Union. For more than 30 years, he served in the U.S. Army Medical Corps.
Thomsen started out with one product in 1980, a notebook-size BABYDATER with two huge wheels on them. He took the time to include various pregnancy facts into it, and had spots for recording pregnancy notes and including a baby picture. It didn’t look as great as today’s product, but he made 500 copies. The name came to him as he waited at 2 a.m. one day for a woman to deliver a baby. Three years later, he made an updated version and sold 25,000 copies.
Col. Thomsen retired in 1994 from the military, and discounted the idea of being a university professor or opening a private practice. “I thought, why not start a company?” he said. So two years later, with a personal investment of $10,000, he decided to take the BABYDATER to its next step.
“I developed the first good-looking BABYDATER, and that gave me the confidence to go ahead,” he said.
Now, the company has about 35 products. Everything is trademarked and copyrighted, and Thomsen has defended his intellectual property rights periodically. His wife is the director of marketing. Their son, Greg, is also serving in the military, currently stationed in Iraq. He took his oath the day his father retired — so the father and son are going on 43 years of consecutive military service.
Moving the products into retail seemed like the next step, Thomsen said. “We have a product line big enough to go to a Hallmark store,” he said. “It was time to do it.” As he continues to come up with new product ideas, he hopes many more steps will come in the company’s evolution. |
