I sat at my kitchen table and handmade the first ZipperBack Glove.Back in 2006, Dave and I were in Truckee, CA with Mason and wanted to share with him our love of the snow. We love to ski, sled, make snowmen, and just play. All I could find for Mason were mittens, but that seemed okay. It seemed okay until we got outside and within 5 minutes, he took them off. Thirty seconds later he was crying with cold hands.
What we found that day, little known to us at the time, is that little kids need functional gloves, not mittens. We also learned in the coming two years that there are no gloves that fit little kids hands. We thought Mason might be behind the curve since we couldn't get his fingers in the holes, and I certainly thought in 2006 and 2007, there had to be an innovative product in snow gear, specifically gloves, for little kids.
In 2008, planning our annual trip to Truckee, the mom of one of Mason's friends informed me that her daughter hated the snow because they couldn't find gloves to fit her hands. She was 6 years old at the time! Certainly old enough to put on a youth sized glove. It was then that I recalled Dave struggling to get gloves on Mason's hands and at the time he said, "They should put a zipper in the back of these things." That recollection led to the invention of the Zipperback Glove for kids (http://www.zipperbackgloves.com/).
January 24, 2008 I embarked on the mission to first see if a zipper would make the hard turn on the back of a glove, and then to see if something like it existed. Using a thrift store glove, with some duct tape, a zipper, a needle and thread, sitting and sewing at my kitchen table, I learned the zipper worked. Hours of Internet searches turned up nothing that a child could easily put on, certainly nothing with a zipper. This is how I invented the Zipperback Glove. Could it be that in 2008 a snow glove for kids doesn't exist? No. They do exist, but they don't fit. I discovered why they don't fit and I will explain that on Monday!
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