Post by Danielle Kurtz,  Creative Director at The Land of Nod

We’re super excited to be celebrating 20 years of Nod this fall. I know on my kids’ birthdays I like to tell them the story of how they came into the world, so I thought it would be nice to take a moment and tell you all the story of how Nod came to be.

It all started way back in 1996 when Nod was just a twinkle in the eye of a new dad-to-be. (Can we all pause a minute to recognize that 1996 was 20 years ago?! That’s craziness! Anyway, back to the story.) Scott Eirinberg and his lovely wife Karla were expecting their first baby, so they set out to decorate the nursery. They very quickly found that the world of baby décor was rife with duckies and teddy bears all in pale shades of pink, blue and yellow. It was all very saccharine and obvious and just didn’t jive with their own sense of style. Scott was a serial entrepreneur, so his immediate reaction was if it doesn’t exist we should create it. He enlisted the help of his childhood friend, and fellow entrepreneur, Jamie Cohen and in 1996 they founded The Land of Nod.

They named the company after a poem by Robert Louis Stevenson. And in the fall of ’96 mailed the first Nod catalog. The internet was in its infancy back then, so catalog was the quickest way to launch a nation-wide company. The catalog featured a range of products for kids and babies all with a sophisticated yet playful style, and plenty of potty humor mixed in for fun. After all, sometimes as parents you have just two options, laugh or cry. At Nod, we opt for laughter whenever humanely possible.

By 2000 another retailer that just so happened to be located down the street from Nod headquarters came knocking on the door. Crate and Barrel had taken notice of what this little company was doing and decided to invest in growing the brand.  With Crate and Barrel’s help, we launched our e-commerce website and opened our first stores.

By 2011, both our founders retired and handed over the reigns to our now Managing Director, Michelle Kohanzo. Michelle grew up at Nod. Starting back in ’99 she worked in pretty much every department throughout her career at Nod giving her the unique perspective on how to grow the brand while staying true to the creative, quality and safety standards that Jamie and Scott set out to achieve.

Today, we have a much larger product assortment, most of which is exclusively designed just for us. We have five retail stores, and five shops inside of Crate and Barrel stores around the country. We’ve also grown from those two guys working out of the basement of Scott’s home, to nearly 200 employees.  

Having been a part of Nod for 17 of those 20 years, I can tell you that though a lot has changed much has remained the same. We still strive to create product that is sophisticated and playful, designed for everyone in the family. We’re still all entrepreneurs at heart. And we still opt for laughter as often as we can. Not only that, all of the core beliefs that Nod was founded on are still alive and well today. Follow along over the coming weeks for more posts about Nod’s history and visions for the future.

Danielle is the Creative Director at Nod and an over-protective mother of two. She’s also completely obsessed with Pinterest, Twitter, Instagram and her Kindle, but not necessarily in that order. Danielle loves to craft, sew and crochet. Her current craft of choice is weaving tiny wall tapestries.