Making It
A bird diaper in the hand is worth money in the bank
By Margaret Webb Pressler
Sunday, October 15, 2006

Ten years ago, Lorraine Moore wanted to find a way to let her pet birds, three cockatiels, out of their cage without getting bird poop everywhere.

When she designed her first bird diaper, she immediately started thinking big.

"It was one of those things where you just kind of get the chills," Lorraine recalls. "I thought, this could really be something."

A dual-military family, then living in San Diego but about to move to Quantico, Lorraine and her husband, Mark, started working on her invention on the side, perfecting the design to allow for flight, comfort and cleanliness.

It was tough winning over the bird-owning community, which resisted the idea at first.

"The culture was, 'If you like birds, you like the mess, and that's the way it is,'" Mark says. That's one reason the couple called its invention the "FlightSuit," to minimize the diaper association.

The bird diaper itself is a tiny slip of Lycra with thin elastic straps that go over the wings. The end of it cups over the bird's tail, and there's a pouch under the bird so the mess stays away from its feathers. Typically, there's a short period of adjustment as a bird gets used to the flight suit, Lorraine says.

In 1999, Lorraine and Mark started selling the product on their Web site, birddiaper.com, for $19.99. Business was slow at first but grew steadily. By the end of this year, their cumulative sales of bird diapers will reach $2 million.

The success of the Web site allowed both Mark, 47, and Lorraine, 46, to retire from the military in 2002. They moved from the Marine base in Quantico to a house in Stafford big enough for them, two kids (now 15 and 18), three birds and a booming business in the basement. They even hired full-time employee.