When Nicole Hawthorne was pregnant in 2016, she went in search of a cloth-made doll that now 4-year-old Jayla would have throughout her childhood and potentially pass down to a child of her own.
Unable to find what she was looking for, Hawthorne decided to bring her own vision to life. She reached out through Etsy to heirloom doll makers around the world, from Paris to Australia, and was able to curate the collection of Jayla's dreams. But Hawthorne didn't stop there — She decided to continue collaborating with those doll makers and launched Jayla's Heirlooms in late 2020.
"I was looking for a handmade doll that looked like her with natural beauty, really simple ... I was looking for something that resonated with me," she said. "The dolls (the doll makers) had were white, but I thought they would look amazing if they were brown or if they had curly hair, so we started collabing."
"I had this small collection for Jayla, and all my friends went crazy over them. Long story short, once I started doing that, I decided I had to sell them," Hawthorne added.
Jayla's Heirlooms did a soft launch in November, selling about 30 handmade linen dolls that Hawthorne said ranged in price from between $50 and $165, based on doll size, intricacy and detail, and country of origin. The dolls sold out quickly, and she realized that the demand was there, but in order to scale, Jayla's Heirlooms would need its own manufacturer and custom pattern.
"I can’t order two or three or even 10 of each doll. That’s not scalable, so I started looking into pattern-making and found a designer in the Philippines who could make us a doll that we could scale and sell more of," she said.
Jayla's Heirlooms
Earlier this year, Hawthorne won a $10,000 NC IDEA micro grant for Jayla's Heirlooms and was accepted into the Amazon Black Business Accelerator program. The funding and that partnership will help the company's new doll — a dark-skinned ballerina in a white outfit, braids and floral crown — launch on Amazon later this year.
Hawthorne said the Amazon doll will sell for $50 to $65, a much more affordable price point than the small-batch dolls from the original launch. It will be made of a cotton material instead of linen but keep the same natural features in its face, clothing and hair.
"We wanted her to have rich melanin because we haven’t seen a lot of darker brown-skinned dolls," she said. "Jayla has been the inspiration behind it all."
Jayla isn't just the face of the company, though. Hawthorne said her daughter handles quality assurance for Jayla's Heirlooms.
"She's our little QA. She makes sure the dolls are safe and picks out which ones are her favorites. She plays with them and makes sure the other kids will love them," Hawthorne said.
Eventually, Hawthorne envisions rolling out a web-based or mobile app that will allow doll customization for boys and girls of all races.
"It helps infuse technology into something that’s very old and classic, like a doll," she said. "American Girl does it now, but those are plastic. I have yet to see it done with a cloth or textiles-based doll."
