Sunday, August 6, 2006
By DUNSTAN PRIAL
STAFF WRITER
Jerry Davis of Dumont has chosen as the slogan for his company: “We’re Number 1 in a Number 2 Business.”
That’s right, Davis’ business is poop — baby’s poop, to be precise. He operates Bottom’s Dry Diaper Service, one of the few remaining services in northern New Jersey that deliver and pick up cloth diapers at the homes of new mothers.
For the most part, cloth diapers have gone the way of the hula hoop and the skate key. The thick cloth rectangles, folded just so and held in place by safety pins, were staples of domestic life up through the 1950s.
But after disposable diapers were introduced on a mass level in the 1960s, the cloth diaper virtually disappeared, and with it the many profitable services that catered to millions of mothers who have since traded in the hassle and mess of cloth for the convenience of the throwaway model.
“It’s a very small business,” acknowledged Davis, 62, who has been involved in the laundry industry for most of his adult life.
With that in mind, Davis has expanded his service to include delivery of all major brands and styles of disposable diapers, as well as breast pump rentals. In fact, of his 190 or so regular clients in Bergen and Rockland, N.Y., counties, fewer than 20 hire him to deliver cloth diapers.
And he doesn’t expect that number to rise.
“The cloth side I know is going by the wayside,” he said one recent afternoon, standing in his basement amid shelves piled high with cloth diapers, biodegradable disposable diapers, diapers for swimming, tiny diapers for newborns and larger pull-up diapers for toddlers not yet potty trained.
He even shows visitors diaper-themed cartoons clipped from the newspaper.
Davis entered the laundry business after leaving the army more than three decades ago, joining the industry leader Consolidated Laundry in the Midwest. He moved to New Jersey in the mid-1980s and opened Bottom’s Dry from out of his home in 1989.
At first, the diaper delivery service was a side business, used to bring in a little extra money to supplement his full-time job as head of laundry services at the former Bergen Pines County Hospital.
It has been his full-time career since 1998, when he left a job on Long Island because of the commute, which on a bad day might take up to five hours.
The timing was right, he said, because most of the larger cloth diaper services had already gone out of business and the new, smaller landscape was ripe for a one-man company.
“This thing really flourished at that point because the other big companies were dropping out,” he said.
He’s been his own boss ever since.
Davis isn’t getting rich — his revenues in 2005 were $110,000, down from $135,000 in 2004. But he makes his own hours and he reports to no one.
“I’m the boss, that’s the big thing,” he said.
For his cloth customers, he starts them off with 70 diapers when the mom arrives home with the new baby.
He then delivers and picks up on a regular basis based on the needs of his clients.
For the first-time mother, Davis also provides instruction. For instance, cloth diapers are folded differently for baby boys than for baby girls: “Little boys pee out, little girls wet down,” he explained.
And there are no more safety pins to fool with — instead, the folded cloth is held in place by a waterproof plastic encasing secured by Velcro straps.
The dirty diapers are taken to an industrial cleaner in West New York.
Old diapers are sold to landscapers for cleaning their tools and to automobile detailers for polishing their cars.
Davis said he isn’t concerned about losing his cloth customers to disposable diapers. He’ll just persuade them to buy their disposables from him, he said.
His disposable clients see him once every three weeks, when he drops off their allotted supply of diapers. “I’ve got it down to a science,” he said.
Parents who have their diapers delivered, Davis observed, never face the terrifying prospect of running out late at night and finding all of the local drug stores are closed.
The only stores that compete with his prices are the superstores, such as Costco and BJs, because they buy in much larger numbers than Davis. But the superstores don’t deliver, he noted.
Customers who rent breast pumps from him can expect the same personal attention he gives to his diaper customers.
He delivers the pump to the new mom’s home, shows her how to use it, then picks it up when she no longer needs it.
“This is a very personal business,” he said.
Davis is pragmatic about the cloth side of his service. If the trend of the past 40 years is any indication, the numbers will continue to fall off.
But he’s not worried. There probably will always be a small niche of environmentally conscientious parents to serve.
“I get a lot of calls each year around Earth Day,” he said, smiling optimistically.
Bottom’s Dry Diaper Service
Address: 106 Berkley Place, Dumont
Owner: Jerry Davis
Employees: 1
Revenues: $110,000 in 2005
Motto: “We’re Number 1 in a Number 2 Business”
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Posted March 29, 2008 
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