BUSINESS SPOTLIGHT:

Kelly Waterman has one thing in common with her customers: They won’t accept anything but the best for their children.

Thanks to Waterman, though, her customers won’t have to launch their own enterprise to get it.

The Newport Beach resident, a mother of three, started the baby bedding company Kelly Kouture five years ago when she couldn’t find fabrics soft enough for her newborn son, Henry.

Waterman toured stores around the area, visited craft fairs in Los Angeles and even invited industry representatives to her house, but no material suited her taste. So she went shopping for raw fabric, set up her sewing machine and went to work crafting sheets on her own.

“I was looking for the best for him, and I didn’t even know what I was looking for,” said Waterman, who lives on the Balboa Peninsula and operates her warehouse on 16th Street.

That search led Waterman to start her own business — an undertaking she had never planned.

As she experimented with different materials and patterns, she donated many of her trial sheets to her friend, George Thompson, who ran the Kids Place Outlet store in Fountain Valley.

The sheets became hot sellers and Thompson recommended Waterman get a sales representative.

Today, more than 200 stores nationwide carry Kelly Kouture products, which include bedding as well as tote bags, sleeping bags and blankets.

The business has also been featured on “Clean House,” “Extreme Makeover Home Edition” and other cable shows.

The company uses minky, microfibers and other ultra-soft materials, but Waterman cares just as much about durability; she and her assistant sewers stitch each piece tightly to ensure it doesn’t come apart in the wash.

“These blankets, they can be an heirloom,” she said.

“They’re not the typical print blanket that you wash 1,000 times and it fades away.”

Waterman does business on her own now without a sales representative, but strictly on her own time; when her son is around the house, she makes sure to be available.

“I stop the clock when Henry’s out of school,” she said. “He’s still the first party.”

MICHAEL MILLER may be reached at (714) 966-4617 or at [email protected].