The letter announcing the demise of Tidy Didy Diaper Service devastated Shawn Shannon, a 43-year-old Laguna Niguel working mother whose son Jake still is months away from potty training.
"I started crying when I heard the news," said Shannon, who works as a jewelry expert at Nordstrom. "It was like getting kicked in the stomach."
Delivering sweet-smelling, freshly washed diapers to Shannon and generations of mothers like her had made Brea-based Tidy Didy a Southern California institution for more than 60 years.
But in late January, Tidy Didy and its sister service, Babyland in National City south of San Diego, made their final runs, victims of slackening demand and mounting losses.
Tidy Didy's fall is only the latest. Cloth diaper services are disappearing nationwide--so swiftly that they are on the brink of extinction.
New York City, once home to 23 companies, today has only three or four. Los Angeles has but a single service. The Bay Area's venerable Dy-Dee Wash folded in October. Now, much of Orange County and most of San Diego, Riverside and San Bernardino counties are without diaper deliveries.
Diaper services "will be nonexistent within two years, and I'd be surprised if they last even that long," said Jim Nowakowski, chief executive of L&N Uniform Supply Co., which owned Tidy Didy and Babyland.
Business was good at both services less than a decade ago, when cloth diapers were seen as environmentally correct. Mothers by the thousands abandoned disposables, a soiled symbol of America's throwaway culture.
But cloth mania proved short-lived.
Slick advertising campaigns by Procter & Gamble, the maker of Pampers and Luvs, and Kimberly-Clark, the maker of Huggies, planted doubt in the public's mind about the benefits of cloth diapers. Environmental fervor cooled. Overworked parents put aside misgivings and embraced the convenience of disposables as never before.
Future Holds No Respite
Eventually, cloth diapers' share of the domestic market fell below 5%, said John A. Shiffert, executive director of the National Assn. of Diaper Services, a trade group that has seen its membership tumble. In 1992, the group had 200 members. Its membership today: just 30.
The future offers no respite for the few remaining diaper services. The national birthrate has been declining over the past decade, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. That means fewer infants in diapers.
