Holland startup adds mother’s touch to 3D knitting tech

HOLLAND, MI - Liz Hilton, founder of Holland-based startup KnitIt, is making waves with her 3D knit baby swaddles, and she has big plans to put that same technology to work in health care and aerospace.

Prior to inventing the Swaddelini in 2018, Hilton always had a passion for "designing and creating from nothing," she said. Hilton originally channeled that into fashion design and studied at the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York City where she refined her focus to knitting.

"Instead of walking into a fabric store and 'feeling what fabric speaks to you,' you have control of every stitch," she said. "Imagine you're building a brick wall, and you have control over the size, shape and texture of each brick, and that's knitting."

Hilton gained more experience and certifications working abroad for Stoll, a German company that utilizes CNC machines for 3D knitting.

She came back to New York excited to share this technology with the fashion industry, but nobody was interested, she said.

Hilton then decided to take what she learned to the office furniture space and took a job with Teknit, a technical knitting manufacturer in Grand Rapids. All the while running her side gig KnitIt.

Around 2017, her first son was born, and she and her husband Brad had issues getting him to sleep soundly.

"Every 20 minutes he would get out of his swaddle, scratch his face, cry. He was a little escape artist," she said. "So, I thought I could use the same technology that I use to solve problems in office furniture to solve my swaddling problem at home."

Hilton took home a 3D-knit tube with pinches where the baby's arms can go in. After putting her son to sleep in it, she and her husband slept through the night for the first time in two months, she said.

"He's just sleeping there peacefully, and Brad grabs my arm and says, 'Liz, you're going to sell a million of these,'" she said.

Hilton launched her flagship product, the Swaddelini, in August 2018 at the Chicago Baby Show and received rave reviews, particularly from mothers of babies with special needs.

KnitIt has donated over 400 Swaddleinis to babies with neonatal abstinence syndrome in hospitals all over the country.

"If a baby is born addicted to a substance, they are going to have more exacerbated Moro reflex, so it's even more important that they have something that makes them feel secure and safe," Hilton said.

By 2019, Hilton got connected with major retailers and was able to launch her product online, but she had to pay the retailers a cut, and she eventually couldn't afford to run her business.

Putting Swaddelini "on life support," Hilton went back to the corporate world, making a few Swaddelinis on the side with a single machine in her garage. But her fortune changed in January 2021 when she posted a video of herself on TikTok putting her second son in the Swaddelini.

Within 24 hours, the video broke a million views, and Hilton realized she needed to hire somebody, because she also had 341 orders from around the world that she had to fulfill with one machine and a full-time job.

Swaddelini's explosive growth led to $250,000 in annual revenue before the business got too big for Hilton's garage and she had to move the business to its current location.

"I could have moved out sooner, but what was good about that was that I saved a lot of money," she said.

"Everybody 's business model is different, but for me my saving grace was that I could grow sustainably from zero to 100."

KnitIt's entire operations happen at its 6,000-square-foot warehouse on Veterans Drive in Holland.

The Swaddelini is woven from an elastic yarn and post-consumer nylon fiber all manufactured in North Carolina. Hilton said the material is soft, strong and safe for babies. Units are made from 16 automated knitting machines, so the finished product comes out in one piece.

"We are creating a product with no cutting, no sewing, no waste, not labor," Hilton said. "The machine is doing all the work."

Each Swaddelini does go through a quality check, which is handled by people, before it ships to the customer. KnitIt has 10 full-time employees, and Hilton said she hopes to hire more as the company expands its product line.

There's also one larger, more high-tech machine in the factory used for research and development of new products.

"One hundred percent of our business right now is the Swaddelini, and that's a little bit concerning because we've got all our eggs in one basket," Hilton said, "so we're just now starting to diversify, but we only want to do projects that are going to have a really high impact."

Those projects include "tubular solutions" for the health care and aerospace industries, similar to the tubular shape of the Swaddelini.

Hilton said 98% of KnitIt's business is direct to consumer, and the remainder is wholesale. Additionally, 20% of the company's direct to consumer business is international, and the swaddelini has shipped to around 150 different countries.

As a Hollander who once lived in the Grand Rapids startup space, Hilton said Holland actually benefits from a smaller, closer-knit startup community.

"In Grand Rapids, there's a lot more support, but Holland is really special, because you've got Lakeshore Advantage, Surge, and a whole bunch of entrepreneurs of various sizes who are extremely passionate about giving back to the entrepreneurial community."

Personally, Hilton is passionate about bringing manufacturing back to the U.S. and believes additive manufacturing is the key to that future.

"We'll never be able to compete with labor abroad," she said. "But if we take out the labor, why not? We just need to be operationally excellent."

Her ethos is engraved on a bell inside the factory, which reads "we make it here, because we love it here."

"I would far rather grow slowly and build here in Holland, Michigan, than ever outsource," she said.

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