New British Safety Standard for baby sleep bags

When  new parents hear the name Grobag, images are immediately conjured up of tomatoes, vegetables and soil. Once they have spent several nights repeatedly getting up to re-cover their cold baby with kicked off blankets, that’s when they discover the Gro Company.

The Grobag was designed by parents of four children, Rob & Ouvrielle Holmes, when 99 per cent of UK parents were putting their children to bed covered in blankets. Now, 90 per cent of UK babies are put to bed in a Grobag. From humble beginnings in a small office above a nightclub in Kingsbridge South Devon, the Grobag business now turns over £10 million a year and exports products to more than 26 countries.

The UK’s most successful baby sleeping bag now has even more cause to celebrate. Not only will they become known by new mums for baby comfort during the night, the Grobag is leading the way in safety by meeting a brand spanking new BSI specification which the Gro Company themselves helped to create.

Now, pretty much every shop, supermarket and its dog have their own version of a baby sleeping bag, so what is so special about the Grobag?

The answer to this is that the creators have worked closely with the Foundation for the Study of Infant Deaths (FSID)  to make sure their bag is safe and used by parents correctly.

Back in 2001, the owners of Grobag forged an important relationship with FSID and Intertek Testing. All working together, Grobag devised their own in-house safety standard and took it to the Baby Products Association (BPA).

With the long term health aims of reducing cot death and putting a baby to sleep safely, Grobag asked the BPA to develop a voluntary code of practise for the bags that could eventually become the basis of a British Standard.

Four years after the BPA Code of Practice was published, work then began turning this practice into a British Standard.

With the guidance of Robert Anslow, the Product Safety Consultant for the BPA and Chairman of BSI Committee CW/1, Grobag and other relevant organisations on the committee have just created the first British Standard to cover baby sleeping bags.

Now, Grobag meets the standard they helped to create: BS 8510:2009, Child use and care articles. Safety of children’s sleep bags. Safety requirements and test methods.

This is the standard that makes sure the bag a baby sleeps in is as safe as it can possibly be. This is what a parent should look for when buying a bag as they come with enhanced safety features to stop babies overheating or wriggling down inside.

Safety features include: A chin and zip guard to stop parts of the bag from rubbing the baby’s chin, drawing their attention to it

A double popper system to stop a baby from opening their bag

Extra poppers are under the arms for small babies, stopping them from sliding down into the bag

Excellent feature – The brilliant Zip Clip covers the front zip to stop a baby from being able to undo the bag.

Photo: Grobag Zip Click

Bags come in tog ratings and nursery thermometers are included to help parents chose the right bag for the right temperature.

Eight years on, the Gro Company have helped fund £500,000 towards FSID’s safe sleep research. Grobag is FSID’s only recommended Baby Sleep Bag specialist.

Director of FSID, Joyce Epstein said: “We are very pleased to be working with Grobag, one of FSID’s longest-standing corporate partners.

“Baby Sleep Bags are a safe alternative to blankets and we are delighted with Grobag’s success and achievements”

Co-founder of the Gro Company, Ouvrielle Holmes said; “We are incredibly proud that so much of what is in the new British Standard has its heritage in Grobag’s own original in-house product safety and quality guidelines which we developed eight years ago. We firmly believe that Baby Sleep Bags are a far safer form of bedding for babies than traditional blankets and sheets, and that we have not only been instrumental in introducing them properly to the UK, but also making sure that those sold in the UK are safe and are used safely too. We are so proud to say that we are leading the way with our Grobags meeting the new BSI standard”.