In an effort to reduce paper and paperwork, we are trying an online registration for this year’s Sprout Swap! Please help us by entering your information and items online before dropping them off at the store.

1. You will need to fill out the form on this page once.
2. You will need to fill out the Item Registration Form once for every item or package of items you wish to enter in the swap.
3. Drop your items off at Sprout Soup during our normal business hours.

What happens next?
4. Shop the swap! February 19-21 at Sprout Soup.
5. After the swap you get paid! Choose if you would like to receive 100% Sprout Soup Store Credit for the value of the items you sold at the swap. Or you may have 80% in cash, given to you as a check.
6. Items that did not sell and your payment should be ready for pick-up by February 25. All items and credits must be picked up by March 14. Items not picked up will be donated and credits will be forfeited.

Please feel free to contact us with questions! We hope the application process is seamless and we can serve you quickly and efficiently! We are looking forward to another sucessful swap!

We’re taking the great features of the Chico Bag one step further for our Sprout Soup customers. We had Chico Bags create the Sprout Soup Bag, the same great bag, now with the Sprout Soup logo! It comes in three colors: purple, green and mango. Pick one up at the store for $6.95 or order online. But we’re going to sweeten the deal! Not only do you get an awesome, packable, unforgettable reusable shopping bag, but every time you bring it in to Sprout Soup, we’ll give you $1 off!

It’s our way of saying thanks for helping us all kick the single-use bag habit. We love it when our customers bring their own bag to the store. Or if they just tuck their purchases into their purse or diaper bag. We even think it’s great if customers just carry their items out of the store (after paying for them, of course ). But now you have no excuse for forgetting your reusable bag, and you even have an incentive to bring it back to the store. We’ll be thrilled to see our customers walking out with Sprout Soup Chico Bags brimming with Sprout Soup goodies!

And of course you can use your Chico Bags around town, too! Make sure to let everyone know you got it at Sprout Soup!

The fine print. Each Sprout Soup Chico Bag is $6.95 plus tax. In order to redeem your Sprout Soup Bag Club discount, you must make a purchase of at least $10 before sales tax. Each bag owner is entitled to one discount per day. Your Sprout Soup Chico Bag must be present to redeem. Lost bags will not be replaced, sorry! But clip the bag to your purse or diaper bag so you always have it with you! We reserve the right to cancel the Sprout Soup Bag Club at anytime.

CPSIA is the Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act passed by Congress in August of 2008 under H.R. 4040. The summary of HR 4040 is as follows:

To establish consumer product safety standards and other safety requirements for children’s products and to reauthorize and modernize the Consumer Product Safety Commission.

Sounds good in theory, who doesn’t want better safety standards for our children? But of course it’s not that easy, lets start to unpack what this means, especially for Sprout Soup.

First, the safety standards. What Congress and the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) was responding to with this law is the large number of recalls that we experienced in 2007. The media was buzzing with reports of lead in toys, most (all?) of which were made in China. In 2007 SproutSoup.com noticed the increased interest in domestically produced and natural wood toys. Parents were definitely tuned into the safety issues with their kids toys.

Spring of 2008 the CPSC and Congress made their move and introduced the Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act (CPSIA). No one disagrees that safety measures aren’t needed. Increased regulations and standards can be a good thing when it comes to our children and their health. And this idea is probably what helped the CPSIA move through the house and senate and finally be signed into law in August of 2008. No one wants lead in their child’s toy, and a less talked about chemical pthalates, which are used to make plastics pliable but can easily leach into a child’s bloodstream when the item is mouthed.

What was a surprise, however, is the impact that this law is having on business. Small businesses particularly, but in these uncertain economic times the scope of this Act and the negative side effects are far-reaching. There are two reasons for this. First, the law calls for accelerated implementation. The first portion of the law went into effect in December. This part only required that toys be labeled if they have small parts. But in just a few days another portion of the law takes effect, and this one is not as easy as labeling.

February 10, 2009 is the day the first restriction on lead limits goes into effect. The restriction isn’t the problem. Proving that items are within the allowable limits is where the issue lies. Manufacturers must have each and every product line independently tested. And each lot (production run) must be tested. Every color, in clothing every size, and every new fabric and material must be tested. For companies that make small runs, the cost of testing is overwhelming. For small cottage industries that create one of a kind items, these testing laws are unmanageable.

For Sprout Soup, all of our products must comply. It does not matter if they were made by a local mama or if they were made by a multinational corporation. If they were made in the US or if they were made in Asia, everything must be tested. Some of our European manufacturers have decided to pull out of the US market altogether. This is not because they fear they cannot comply with the laws, it is because they cannot afford more testing to prove that they comply. Much of what we were purchasing from Europe complies with European standards, some have Oko-tex certification, a testing standard that tests for lead as well as other chemicals, but this certification is not currently recognized by the CPSC and the CPSIA.

We have begun collecting Certificates of Conformity for the products that we have. Many of our manufacturers are complying or are working toward complying. On the down-side, there will be marked increases in the price of our products to cover the costs of these tests. We are seeing price increases in the neighborhood of $10 and $20 on some items to cover the testing. We are, and always have been, dedicated to providing safe and natural items for families. While we are 100% confident that we have not sold products that contain lead or pthalates, this confidence is nothing when it comes to the law. We have to be able to prove that our products comply, products without certification are considered banned and hazardous after February 10.

We need changes in the form of amendments to CPSIA! While some might ask that the entire law be repealed, safety in childrens products is important. We just need to review this law to make safety attainable for everyone and keep all the small businesses in America that cater to children up and running.

CPSIA applies to every product made for children 12 and under. At Sprout Soup this means baby carriers, cloth diapers, clothing, accessories, shoes, toys, furniture, feeding supplies and blankets. A good percentage of what we have here in the store. The only items we do not need to certify are items for mom: our nursing clothing, nursing shawls, mom skincare, bags and our reusable water bottles in the larger (adult) sizes.

What Needs to Happen for CPSIA to be Manageable

The Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act is not all bad. And it can be revised to make it manageable for small businesses and cottage industries to continue to operate. Many are calling for recognition of component testing. Some manufacturers of fabric, which would be considered a component in many items, have already begun to test their fabrics to comply with CPSIA. Recognizing that cutting and sewing fabric into clothing or a baby sling doesn’t alter it’s lead levels and allowing manufacturers to use this testing as part of their certification would go a long way. We can also reach out to our European counterparts and recognize some of their safety standards that equate to CPSIA and allow those standards to pass, allowing them to continue to export into the United States.

Items made in the USA, especially those that have components sourced in the USA, have a small likelihood of containing lead. Lead has been outlawed in paints for decades. Revisions to the CPSIA that recognize this and encourage domestic manufacturing could go a long way toward helping our American economy instead of hurting it.

We don’t want to see businesses close down because they cannot afford these new testing regulations. We don’t want to see prices increase dramatically because of the costs of testing. We don’t want to lose good quality brands, we want to be able to provide the same products that we have been providing for the past five years: safe, natural, well-researched and planet-friendly. At Sprout Soup we do the investigation so you don’t have to. We aim to make your choices easy, and we want to be able to continue, but this is something we cannot do without the manufacturers behind us, providing us with these quality products.

The store looks great. Lis has done an excellent job laying everything out. We still need a few more fixtures to display some items but we are pretty close. The mural in the play area is almost done and it looks great – Kudos to Vanessa!

Right now our focus is on getting everything ready for the Grand Opening on Thursday, Oct 23 from 4-7pm. There is still a lot to do. We have gotten a lot of donations for prizes so hopefully lots of people show up.

Overall it has been a great week.

Here’s where I’ve been for the past month. From morning till late at night. Often very late at night. But it’s all come together. Sprout Soup is now located at 4310 N High Street, Columbus OH 43214.

Come on over and visit us! Here’s just a bit of what you will see:

We will be having a Grand Opening Celebration on October, 23, 2008. More information about that coming soon. Until then, however, we are open, come and visit us! Our hours are:
Tuesday 10a-6p
Wednesday 10a-6p
Thursday 12p-8p
Friday 10a-6p
Saturday 10a-4p
Closed Sunday and Monday

Hope to see you there soon!

We have been scrambling around keeping things running without the internet. We have been able to keep shipping packages thanks to Panera’s free WiFi – without that we would have been in trouble. Apparently running an internet business requires having an internet connection – go figure.

Hopefully we will get internet back soon and will be back to blogging on a regular basis.

On Friday I planned our first ever Open Stock Room Event and it was a huge success! I had so much fun and know that those who attended did, too! We were busy non-stop from right before noon until well after 5pm. It was wonderful! Mamas and babies trying out new carriers and lots of shopping fun. We’ll do it again in a couple months.

On Saturday we did a lot of work outside, cleaning up the yard and the porch. We discovered a bumble bee nest in the ground, unfortunately because it stung Youngest Son. The bees were everywhere in the backyard, and as dusk approached they just kept coming. I think it was a relatively new hive as we play back there all the time and haven’t noticed them. Well not knowing what to do with the hive, since we needed to keep the kids safe, TRG remembered hearing that the hive should be torched. So yeah, we lit our backyard on fire. Did I mention we haven’t gotten much more than a few drops of rain in probably a month?

So as the ground lit up I could see how cavernous this hive was. It was huge. Now reading on Wikipedia it sounds like these bees usually take over holes dug by other animals, and we do have, or had, a mole living back there. Not sure we really exterminated them, we saw probably a dozen more bees the next day. But they didn’t bother our bonfire and cookout, which was the big event Sunday night, so we must have made some kind of impression.

And last, what perfect summer weekend is complete without a bonfire, grilling marshmallows, grilling out and watching a dozen kids run around the yard together.

Do your part to help the environment and still keep up with us at SproutSoup.com! And if you have a website or blog, add the Eco-Safe initiative to your own site. You can get free iTunes music!