Snappi® Baby was established in September 2001.  The business came about when Kate Braithwaite, the founder and marketing director for Snappi® Baby, was approached by a friend, one of the patent attorneys of the Snappi® Diaper Fastener, to consider distributing the product in North America.  Having used the fastener when she cloth diapered her daughter, Jordan, she knew what a fantastic product it was and so did not hesitate to take on this marketing project.  This presented the opportunity to put her marketing qualifications into practice by facing the marketing challenges of a very 'disposable oriented' market and allowing her to schedule work around spending time with her 11 year-old daughter. 

Although the Snappi® Diaper Fastener had been available in the USA for a while prior to this, it have been on a very small scale.  The first thing the company did was to have the Snappi® Diaper Fastener evaluated by the WIN Innovation Institute in Missouri, who evaluate and refer products to Wal-Mart.  The uniqueness and commercial viability of the product was recognized by the evaluation it received - a Success Likelihood Rating in the top 7% of products assed by WIN, placing it in a select group of WIN clients.  Although not sold in Wal-Mart stores, the evaluation helped establish the commercial viability of the product for North America.  The company then got ready to sell a product that had sold over 30 million units elsewhere in the world to date.