Gone Gaga for Good

I have this friend of a friend. She went to business school, where she developed a plan to start a business designing clever products for parents. After graduation, she followed her dream and got down to work. I met her a couple of times, and while I was very impressed with her, I wasn’t sure she could pull it off. She’s not a parent. The designer she worked with wasn’t a parent. Could the two of them really create something that would be useful for parents?

When she told me her first product would be a diaper bag, I tried to be optimistic, but there are so many diaper bags out there. I couldn’t imagine what she could do that hadn’t been done before. But I was wrong.

Jill Cartwright officially launched Go Gaga at this show, and her first and only product is really a stroke of genius. It’s a diaper bag called The Slide. It’s a well designed bag, with a good amount of internal pockets and external compartments. It has a nice changing pad and even a clever wipes pouch. But the groundbreaking innovation is the shoulder strap. It’s made of a chic gray stretchy material and it’s very wide, creating an effect similar to a baby pouch carrier like a Hotsling or a Kangaroo Korner and distributing the weight of the bag very evenly across the shoulder.

When I first saw the bag, I suspected it might be comfortable, and around mid-day yesterday, my shoulder was aching from a day and a half of carrying around my heavy bag. I asked my husband to stop by Jill’s booth and see if we couldn’t borrow a Slide for a few hours to test it out. She was happy to oblige, and gave him two – one for him and one for me. We both transferred all the contents of our bags and wore the Slide for the rest of the day. It was far and away the most comfortable bag I have ever carried.

I wasn’t sure if the unconventional strap would look unusual or unfashionable, but I got stopped all day long by curious people. Everyone I spoke to loved the bag, thought it looked great and wanted to try it on. Once they tried it on, like me they were sold. The bag also comes with a shoulder pad that can be used to gather the fabric into a more conventional looking strap. I’m so happy for Jill, because I think parents will love her bag. And I’m also sorry I underestimated her – I guess you don’t have to be a parent to know how to solve a problem.

The Slide will retail for around $95.

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