Local diaper dynasty weathers Huggies herd.BRIAN O'Neil Brian O'Neil (born 6 September 1972 in Paisley) is a former Scottish professional football defence midfielder. O'Neil was forced to retire from the playing staff of Preston North End in October 2006, due to long standing injury problems. started working at Dy-Dee Diaper Service in Pasadena in 1979, a company his father James started in 1938. After graduating from college, James O'Neil heard that diaper companies had real potential and selected Pasadena as the site for his new company. Brian O'Neil is now the owner of Dy-Dee Diaper Service, believed to be the sole cloth diaper service in Southern California Southern California, also colloquially known as SoCal, is the southern portion of the U.S. state of California. Centered on the cities of Los Angeles and San Diego, Southern California is home to nearly 24 million people and is the nation's second most populated region, . "After graduating from college, dad knew of a diaper service that started in Chicago and he and a friend visited the plant. He studied cities around the U.S. to see where the demographics The attributes of people in a particular geographic area. Used for marketing purposes, population, ethnic origins, religion, spoken language, income and age range are examples of demographic data. were right to start one. He found Pasadena, bought some supplies and moved out West. "The (diaper) industry in Southern California actually peaked in 1990 with about 30,000 customers. There was a lot of environmental fervor about putting solid waste in landfills, so people started turning more to cloth diapers. After that, the disposable diaper industry put out a large media blitz blitz n. 1. a. A blitzkrieg. b. A heavy aerial bombardment. 2. An intense campaign: a media blitz focused on young voters. 3. and neutralized neu·tral·ize tr.v. neu·tral·ized, neu·tral·iz·ing, neu·tral·iz·es 1. To make neutral. 2. To counterbalance or counteract the effect of; render ineffective. 3. it. Today, we have about 1,500 customers. "We do minimal advertising. We produce a 20-page newsletter called the 'Wet Set Gazette' six times a year and distribute approximately 50,000 copies to doctors' offices and hospitals. "Most of our business is still done over the phone. We have a Web site now and sell some products over the Internet Internet Publicly accessible computer network connecting many smaller networks from around the world. It grew out of a U.S. Defense Department program called ARPANET (Advanced Research Projects Agency Network), established in 1969 with connections between computers at the , but the service is operated pretty much the same. We've also diversified--we now do linens Linens are fabric household goods, such as pillowcases and towels. Originally, many, such as bed sheets and tablecloths, were made of linen. Today, the term "linen" has come to be applied to all related products even though most are made of cotton, various synthetic , tablecloths and napkins for restaurants. Not to worry, everything's washed separately in separate locations. "We've had families that have been with us for generations. We have one employee that has been with us since 1942. Our average employee probably stays about 12-15 years and we have about 50 employees. It's a family-run business and we work together like a family. "When things started to decline in the 1990s after the environmental fervor died down, I was a bit worried. But now that our customer base has leveled off, I'm confident there won't be any further decline." |
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