Meet Esembly: 2020 Takeoff Baby Cohort company

This is the third installment in an interview series with the 2020 Target Takeoff Baby cohort. Participating companies are sharing, in their own words, details about their innovative companies. All interviews have been conducted by the Target Takeoff Program Management team. 

 Meet Esembly, as told by founder Liz Turrigiano. 

 Esembly is a complete sustainable diapering system providing parents everything they need to live less disposably — from landfill-free diapers and organic skincare, to upcycled storage and specially formulated detergent. With a pioneering spirit and forward-thinking point of view, Esembly is sparking a movement to inspire families to rethink the consumption of single use disposables and to trail blaze comprehensive, conscious parenting. 

Driven by our passion for radically reducing diaper waste we launched Diaperkind, a cloth diaper service in NYC in 2009. In the decade that followed we washed millions of cloth diapers, worked with thousands of new families, and learned everything there is to know about laundry science, diaper design and the wants and needs of modern parents. Realizing the geographic limitations of our delivery service we began work on Esembly, which enables us to expand outside of our community to help parents around the world save money, and diaper sustainably. When crafting the Esembly product line, our Diaperkind families served as our inspiration, testers, early critics, and even our first investors.  

We officially launched Esembly in February of this year, unknowing of the doom that was right around the corner. By mid-March supply chain issues and consumer bulk buying led to low inventory of disposable diapers. Parents were left scrambling to find solutions for their little ones, who go through 50-80 diapers per week! Esembly saw a 400% uptick in sales in the month of April as families moved away from throw-away diapers and searched for a more reliable solution. Even now as disposable availability is restored, we are continuing to see month-over-month growth from families whose consumer behavior has been forever remodeled by the pandemic. The allure of sustainable and economical diapering is real! 

As we move into the future, Esembly will become even more planet-friendly as we transition our skincare and laundry lines to be plastic-free and refillable. We also hope to make our products easier to source by bringing them to beloved mass retailers like Target. 

 For more information about Esembly, visit esemblybaby.com