Tara Williams seeks an investor for Dreamland Baby, her weighted baby sacks, in Shark Tank episode 1122, the season 11 finale. Williams created her product out of sheer exhaustion. Her fourth child, Luke, just would not sleep through the night. He was constantly fussing. One night, when he was being particularly fussy, Tara placed a heavy blanket on him and it calmed him down immediately. For the first time, Luke, and his parents, slept through the night.
That inspired her to make the first version of Dreamland Baby. Her mother-in-law helped her sew the first “sack” that became her product. The sacks are wearable weighted blankets – kind of a cross between overalls and a sleeping bag. The weight comes from poly pellets sewn between layers of cotton fabric.
Weighted blankets help babies reduce stress and increase relaxation. The weight is located on front (or top) of weighted sack only and is designed to promote back and side sleeping. It’s kind of like swaddling, but with a bit more gentle pressure. Soon, word got out and Tara was making them for family and friends. That’s when she knew she was on to something.
She took the leap and raised $24,541 on Kickstarter back in June, 2019 to get her business started. The campaign funded in 72 hours! Now, she sells them on her website and Amazon for $79. They were designed in partnership with pediatricians, NICU nurses and certified sleep consultants. Dreamland Baby exceeds all United States Consumer Product Safety Commission standards too. Tara likely wants a Shark to help her “blow up” the product. Will a Shark weigh in and invest?
Company Information
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Posts about Dreamland Baby on Shark Tank Blog
Dreamland Weighted Baby Blankets
Dreamland Baby Shark Tank Recap
Tara enters seeking $100,000 for 10% of her business. She wants a Shark’s help getting her business off the ground. Pretty much all of her sales of $30,000 or so is from the Kickstarter which causes concern among the Sharks. They feel it’s a product, not a company yet.
It looks as if Tara isn’t getting a deal, but at the last minute, Lori offers $100,000 for 22.5%. Lori says they have a long road ahead, but she believes in Tara.
Dreamland Baby Shark Tank Update
The Shark Tank Blog constantly provides updates and follow-ups about entrepreneurs who have appeared on the Shark Tank TV show. The deal with Lori never closed. As of November, 2021, the company is still selling direct to consumers on their website. For a time, they reduced their Amazon inventory due to Amazon listing too many knock-off products. In December, 2021, the company announced it had reached $10 million in lifetime sales. You can find their products in Target, Nordstrom, Bloomingdales, Babylist and Amazon. The company also introduced weighted swaddles, transition swaddles and bamboo pajamas.
In June, 2022, the American Academy of Pediatrics issued a warning about weighted blankets saying it “could hypothetically increase the risk of sudden infant death syndrome.” The Consumer Product Safety Commission reviewed the report and “is taking a close look at these weighted products as part of a larger examination of wearable blankets.”
Lawsuit
Dreamland Baby founder Tara Williams called the findings “speculative” and added that here were no reports of infant deaths due to weighted blankets, but by June, 2024, at least 8 infant deaths were attributed to them. Richard Trumka, the head of the Consumer Products Safety Commission issued a warning to retailers about weighted blankets in April, 2024, and many of them, including Amazon and Target, pulled the products off store shelves. In May, 2024, Tara Williams filed suit against the Consumer Products Safety Commission for their “illegal efforts” to ban the product’s sales. In addition, the New Civil Liberties Alliances, on behalf of Dreamland Baby, planned to sue Richard Trumka, the head of the Consumer Products Safety Commission. They issued this statement:
“Those letters similarly disparaged these products and leave retailers, as well as the public, with the impression that products like our client’s have caused infant deaths. As Commissioner Trumka is aware, that impression is false. His statements are laced with misrepresentations and deceitful language and imagery about the safety of weighted sleep products like Dreamland’s. Nonetheless, retailers’ responses to his admonishment were swift.
Within days of receiving Commissioner Trumka’s letters the retailers, including Amazon, Target, Babylist, Nordstrom, Maisonette, and more, stopped selling weighted infant products, including Dreamland’s.
Commissioner Trumka does not have the authority to use the weight of his office to effectuate a stop sale on products when he was not able to achieve even a notice of proposed rulemaking through the avenues provided for by law.
As a result of Commissioner Trumka’s unlawful statements and actions, Dreamland has suffered tremendous financial losses. In fact, one retailer has stopped the sale of all of Dreamland’s products, not just its weighted products.”
Dreamland Response
Tara Williams responded to the actions of the Consumer Products Safety Commission; she issued this statement to Sleepopolis:
- The AAP’s 2022 recommendations against the sleep sacks “imply a demonstrated evidence of a lack of safety,” she says, yet they only reference one study, which concludes in its results: “A total of 16 patients were enrolled for a total of 67 weighted blanket sessions. To address safety, no adverse events were observed, the weighted blankets were never removed due to infant distress, and infants experienced no significant temperature change. To address feasibility, 94 percent of approached mothers were receptive to the use of weighted blankets and staff reported no obstacles to using the blanket.” Therefore, the study actually demonstrated safety, not risk.
- “Over the past 10+ years, Dreamland Baby and Nested Bean combined have sold over 3.5 million weighted sleep sacks and swaddles with NO evidence of a product hazard.”
- “The AAP, CPSC, NIH, CDC and others have only theorized that our products are unsafe,” Williams says. “They have provided no peer-reviewed, published, or scientific evidence of any kind demonstrating this product category is unsafe, has ANY connection to SIDS, or any other serious injury to babies.”
- The AAP “continued to push the lack of efficacy of weighted products.” But, in a 2022 survey of 500 responses, she shares that 90 percent of parents said it helped their baby feel calm. A company representative shares that another Dreamland Baby Co. survey reported “positive results” from 51 NICUs, but that isn’t publicly available for privacy reasons, they added.
Class Action
In June, 2024, two seperate class action lawsuits were filed in California Federal Court: one against Nested Bean and one against Dreamland Baby. The Dreamland suit alleges Dreamland’s products weren’t safe as advertised and that the company was in violation of state and federal consumer laws. The specific products cited in the suit include: Dream Weighted Sleep Sack, the Dream Weighted Sleep Swaddle, the Dream Weighted Transition Swaddle, the Bamboo Weighted Transition Swaddle and the Weighted Toddler Blanket. The suit also accuses Dreamland of false and misleading advertising with regards to its safety claims. The lawsuit demands that Dreamland Baby issue full refunds to all those joing the class.
Shark Tank Blog will update this page with new news about Dreamland Baby and Tara Williams as new information becomes available.
