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Ohio State quarterback Will Howard’s infant sleep issues turned into a family business

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Ohio State quarterback Will Howard’s infant sleep issues turned into a family business

Will Howard’s family is eternally grateful that he was a lousy sleeper as an infant.

Ohio State’s starting quarterback became the inspiration for an invention – Baby Merlin’s Magic Sleepsuit – that became his family’s business.

“I like to joke around and take credit for it,” Howard said with a laugh. “But no, that was all my parents.”

Will is the oldest of Bob and Maureen’s four kids. Maureen is a pediatric physical therapist who used to work in the NICU unit at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. She was an expert at getting babies to sleep.

But Will was a challenge. He was a big baby and quickly outgrew what his parents used as a swaddle.

“I’d lay him down for naps, and he’d wake up in like 30 minutes,” Maureen said. “I knew he needed more sleep. He was grumpy. I was grumpy.”

She fashioned a sturdier outfit that provided the support that allowed Will to sleep better.

“Bob and I joked that this is like a magic sleep suit, never thinking of creating a (commercial) product at that point,” Maureen said. “We were just really happy that he was sleeping, we were sleeping and everyone was happier.”

When Will’s sister Tori was born the next year and the Howards used the outfit for her, word of mouth began to spread among their friends.

“I made a few rough prototypes and shared them with friends,” Maureen said. “Time and time again, they were like, ‘Oh my gosh, I was having to hold my baby for every nap, and now I can lay them down.’ ”

Bob Howard worked in real estate finance and has an entrepreneurial bent. He always wanted to start a company.

“He said, ‘Is there anything out there like this?’ ” Maureen said. “We looked, and there really wasn’t. There were a lot of swaddle products, a lot of sleep sacks, but nothing out there for what we call the swaddle transition.”

The Howards ran the business as a side project for years, using their garage to store the sleepsuits. As their family and business grew, they moved to a bigger house in Downingtown, which is about an hour west of Philadelphia.

“She’d yell down the stairs, ‘We’ve got a shipment,’ and all of us would walk outside and take all the boxes off the truck,” Will said. “There’d probably be over 100 sometimes.”

Eventually, Bob and Maureen quit their other jobs to focus on the business.

“All the things they went through to get that off the ground, and how long it took, it was like a 10-year process to even be profitable,” Will said.

“For me, it was cool to see them push through. It taught me how to work hard and how to appreciate all the little things, all the time that they would give us. It did bring us together as a family, too.”

The Howards eventually added staff and a warehouse and the product grew from being sold mainly in boutique stores to selling at big-box stores and Amazon.

In 2021, the Howards sold the company to a Boston-based firm.

“We thought it was time to take it to the next step, so we did sell, and that was hard,” Maureen said. “It was like my fifth baby.”

Maureen remains the face of the sleepsuit on the company’s website.

“Our kids saw it grow from an idea to a thriving business,” she said. “They helped unload shipments and break down pallets. It’s pretty cool that they saw that and helped. It truly was a family-run business, and we’re super proud of that.”

It all started because Will Howard had trouble sleeping.

Is that still an issue for him?

“I sleep like a baby now,” he said. “I can sleep in like an instant.”

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