I am Dennis Frederick the founder and owner of the All Together Enterprises which includes OsoCozy Cloth Diapers. I have been in the cloth diaper business for 24 years, first as a partner in Mothers’ Little Helper Diaper Service (1991-97) and then the All Together Diaper, Co (1994-2011) and ClothDiaper.Com (1996-present). The All Together Diaper, Co changed its name to OsoCozy in 2011. OsoCozy continues operations today as the leading supplier of prefold and flat diapers in North America. I have a bachelor's degree in Environmental Engineering (University of Utah) and a master's degree in Business Administration (Westminster College).
I am the former Chair, Vice-Chair, Treasurer and Board Member, in various years, of the Real Diaper Industry Association (RDIA) which is a trade association for businesses in the cloth diaper industry. RDIA is committed to expanding opportunities for cloth diaper business owners and expanding the market share for cloth diapers in general.
Prior to committing full time to these business pursuits I was employed as an Environmental Engineer for the State of Utah. During my last 6 years working for the state I managed the Ground Water Protection program for the Utah Department of Environmental Quality. I am proud of my record in public service in protection of critical water resources.
In addition to the OsoCozy and ClothDiaper.Com All Together Enterprises also includes the massage linen supply brand “BodyLinen” (2003-present) and the adult incontinence brand “LeakMaster” (2005-present).
More About Me
I have been married for 22 years to my wife Bobbie. Together we have four children and now our first grandson. In addition to our family, we enjoy skiing, camping, hiking, mountains, tropical islands, rock n roll and reggae. My marriage to Bobbie has given me the strength and self confidence I need to be a leader in addition to wonderful children that motivate me to keep pushing forward. Bobbie has also made many key contributions to the business that have enabled us to succeed.
I first became involved in cloth diaper business as a young MBA student when I wanted to direct my entrepreneurial spirit to a business that created both a social good and profit. Particularly a business that reduced resource consumption and pollution. The profit making goal took about 8 years to finally be realized. However in the meantime millions of disposables were kept from the landfills and the resources that would have been used to make those disposable were conserved. Today we conservatively estimate that our customers that purchase OsoCozy diapers prevent the manufacturer and disposal of over 50 million single use diapers per year. We are proud to share this ongoing accomplishment with our retailers, diaper services and OsoCozy home users. Thank You!
I credit my environmental and social justice ethics to my parents Dave Frederick and Betty Moses. My father is a lifelong environmentalist, educator and private school administrator who in retirement is an accomplished and successful anti Walmart organizer and liberal/radical political activist. My mother was a member of the American Indian Movement, a group that was active in the civil rights movement for Native Americans. Latter she managed various educational and training programs for Native Americans headed into education and medical careers. She was key in providing support for hundreds of students that earned college degrees and in many cases those student went on to become role models for the next generation. I am thankful for these influences that made me believe that power does not equal right. I learned to think for myself and be critical of misinformation perpetuated by both government and businesses. Both my parents showed me, that if you were lucky, you could combine a career/business with doing something that made a difference.
Environmental & Social Responsibility
Regarding the environment and social justice cotton is often criticized on both counts. First as a resource intensive crop and second for labor practices in some counties that amount to slave labor. For the most part OsoCozy cloth diapers are made of 100% cotton. Yes cotton farming and processing is resource intensive compared to many food crops. However, food is eaten and some of it ends up in our cotton diapers. Cotton diapers can be used as many as 150 times so comparisons to single use food crops do not make sense.
We source the majority of our cotton fabric that we use to sew our products through a single mill in Pakistan that is a certified fair trade facility. The fair trade certification is an assurance that the cotton is obtained from farms that pay a fair wage and that a fair price is paid to the farmers. Absolutely no slave labor in our supply chain. The fair trade movement also teaches farmers how to minimize or eliminate the use of pesticides and non-organic fertilizers. Not only are these practices better for the environment and safer for agricultural worker but they also help the farmer keep more of what they earn. Fair trade practices do not just apply to the farm. They apply to the entire supply chain. Fair wages and minimization of environmental impacts apply from farm to the final sewing. It has long been our aim to include more organic products in our offering. Very soon we will be adding organic prefolds to our line of products which are fair trade and grown without pesticides or petroleum derived agricultural fertilizers.
As of late 2015 we employ 13 people full time at our Utah based warehouse and customer service center. Many of our employees have been with us for about decade and without their hard work and creativity this business would not be anywhere near as successful. Our employees experience a great working environment, competitive wages and have access to quality health insurance. We create another 5 full time jobs locally through contract sewing. We sew as many of our products as we can locally. However for competitive reasons and a host of other issues about 85% of our products are imported. We take pride in offering whatever locally sewn products that we can.
I like to remind myself and my employees that being in business should not be 100% about chasing dollars. We believe in being generous when it comes to helping others. The need for cloth diapers worldwide is huge. Both in our country and around the world diapering all our children is a struggle. We contribute regularly to cloth diaper banks and provide access to our products for all charitable organizations regardless of size. Because the need is so great we can only directly help a fraction of those wonderful people and organizations working to help others in need. But our doors are always open for those looking for economical and relatively hard to find reusable cloth diapers for those in need. Often we find creative ways to use our resources to help charitable groups such as using our warehouse to store charitable donations headed for the third world or by using our buying power to secure supplies for groups at prices they would not otherwise have access to.
