Green Cradle is a brand based in Los Angeles, CA that specializes in infant and children’s furniture, natural mattresses and custom natural wood beds and furniture for all ages. It was founded in 2006 by Edward and Ilana Olshansky. What prompted them to start the company was that their infant children at the time were having problems because they were extremely chemically sensitive. They thought it might be due to allergies and went through the process of elimination for their food diet but they found out it was not food related. It was completely environmental. They started doing more research. Edward said that “The reason we found that out was because as they started making changes in their home they started seeing huge improvements in their kids’ health. It resolved allergies, congestion, digestive issues, etc. They first removed all the carpeting which according to Edward has a lot of chemicals especially when they steam proof it. It has a lot of carcinogens and synthetics that you don’t want to inhale. Then they installed hardwood floors so there was no off-gassing from that. The next thing they did was replace the furniture because a lot of the furniture back then and now is made with all kind of engineered wood. It often has layers and layers of cardboard, plywood and pressed woods glued together with who knows what. That has the highest off-gassing rate as opposed to many other things. According to the EPA most of the exposure to toxic chemicals comes from inside our own homes with everyday furnishings releasing continuously around us. The EPA warns that home furnishings pose a more serious risk to human health than tobacco smoke. This info blew us away. You think that you eat healthy and you exercise you’re good, right? That’s actually just 1/3. The 2nd is what you’re inhaling and what you’re exposed to environmentally. The 3rd thing is body care products that get absorbed through the skin. A lot of products these days are marked eco friendly, non toxic, etc. A lot of companies can use these labels. They’re buzzwords. People often think that if the products say that it is eco friendly and non toxic that it must be. But it isn’t always. A lot of the products that are sold in the US especially with the bedding industry are illegal to sell in Europe. There are no mandatory fire retardants to pass a burn test in Europe because they use toxic chemicals. The biggest improvement that we saw with our children was when we took out the nursery furniture that we bought. What we learned about it is that it’s a bunch of compressed wood with a thin layer of veneer. The companies say that it’s walnut or cherry wood and you think the whole thing is solid wood but it’s not. It’s like 1/16th or 1/32 inch of veneer. Underneath it’s who knows what. It might be a plywood, particle board, veneers or whatever. And those actually have a lot of chemical off-gassing. So obviously in the first months and years of life infants getting exposed to these toxins would have a huge impact on their health issues over the years. As you make changes in your environment you start with what you’re exposed to inside your very own home.”
He went on to say, “You spend 2/3 of your life in your house or 1/3 of your life sleeping in a bed on a mattress which can be full of toxins. So first we had to change the mattresses. Our organic mattresses have 3 components- organic cotton, organic wool and organic rubber latex. We also started making the mattresses without the fire retardant chemicals which was not available when we started. Imagine what it takes to be able to pass a burn test. When they do the test they literally take 2 blow torches at a certain number of degrees and they run it from the side to the top of the mattress. it has to have a controlled burn and put itself out within a certain amount of time like 30 or 45 seconds without combusting. Obviously if you put a blow torch to latex, cotton or even synthetic memory foam it’s going to burn like a Christmas tree. So how do you prevent it from burning? Most of the companies out there with inorganic mattresses…how do they pass it? They spray the materials with a bunch of fire retardant chemicals or put the chemicals inside and they wrap the mattress in synthetics. A lot of the companies will use things like kevlar, tyvek etc and they spray them with other synthetics. But these chemicals are heavy duty. If you do your research on what’s in them it will blow you away. So how did the organic and natural industry go around it? The way we do it is that we don’t allow any other synthetics. We don’t allow any fire retardant chemicals. So as an organic all natural company what we do is take 100% wool, we quilt it inside the cover of the mattress in between organic cotton layers. Inside you can put organic latex or springs. So regarding making it fire retardant naturally if you use a significant amount of wool and you properly cut and sew it, it will pass the burn test with no flame retardant chemicals. Every single mattress we sell here has no fire retardant chemicals. When we sent them to get fire tested, it passed. We know how to do it but most companies don’t want to use wool, cotton and other organic materials because it’s much more expensive. It’s much cheaper to use a polyester based material. And they can call it ‘natural’ because they use 20% or 50% cotton and the rest is synthetic.”
“We also do a lot of custom work in terms of furniture and mattresses. But our bread and butter is the furniture, the mattresses and everything that fits inside the house. It’s for everyone from newborns, children, teenagers to adults. Now people are becoming more aware about the mattress industry. Companies like ours educate them and they start asking the right questions. They don’t go into a conventional mattress store and ask ‘do you have a natural mattress?’ And those stores will likely say ‘yeah, all these are natural.’ The covers are made from cotton or whatever. They don’t really tell you the entire truth. You have to ask specific questions like what are the components of the mattress? And if they tell you it’s memory foam, synthetic foam or green foam, whatever foam- that’s all plasticized materials. So now you have to ask well, is it a synthetic and is it possible I might be allergic to it? You can be allergic to anything. But the question is did that allergy maybe develop over time? Maybe you were sensitive to it from the beginning. Or maybe as you get older your body is not able to cope with processing things when your body starts to get bombarded with these synthetics. Your body and immune system continues to be on high alert and fighting. It cannot relax and repair itself. Instead its just fighting to try to get rid of all these synthetics in your body. That’s what happens when you can become permanently affected by it because your body is always on high alert. It can’t relax.” I asked Edward if someone uses these toxic mattresses and furniture for a prolonged period of time is this one of the root causes of a lot of health issues and modern diseases? He responded “I’m not a chemical expert. My background is in mathematics, business and engineering. I am a logical person. When we did our research what we did find was that there was a direct correlation for our family. When a baby is born the organs are small and brand new. So you try to minimize the amount of chemical exposure that you can. You can’t get rid of all of it because you are surrounded by it in the environment. But if you can get rid of 50%, 60% or 80% or more then you’re just minimizing the chances of that person having some sort of allergies or sensitivity to something. As an adult your body and organs are much more well developed. Your liver is able to get the toxins out but with a baby before they’re even born I think the umbilical cord has something like 250 industrial chemicals in it. So that is why we started the store.”
“Our store has mainly 3 components- the baby, kids and adult products. The staple product that we sell obviously is the crib and crib mattress. That is the number one seller for babies. And the Gratitude slat crib is the number one crib that is our design. It is a simple modern crib and is what is called a 7 in one. It converts from a basinet to a changing table and a crib. The changing table becomes a bookcase and then also a toddler day bed and a full size bed. They can literally take it from birth through high school and they can just pack it up and take it with them to college. So there is no waste. There are different types of wood we use. Our top 5 sellers are brown maple, red oak, hard maple, cherry and walnut. We also have other species like white oak, sycamore and other locally sustained woods. Everything we sell is all sourced in North America. We don’t import anything from Asia or overseas for many reasons. There are a lot of issues with the footprint part of it. Also a lot of the stuff that comes from overseas gets chemically sprayed and the containers get chemically sprayed. So there are a lot of issues separately. Here we know which yards and farms we’re buying it from so we have much tighter control over the lumber. Same thing with the materials. You know where they’re coming from. In terms of wood, all the construction and all the furniture is solid wood. If you pick oak the whole thing is made from solid oak. Even the drawer boxes in the furniture, cabinets, dressers and changing tables etc are made from wood. There is no compressed board. If you ever tried to break a piece of shelf from most furniture today it looks like a piece of cardboard. That’s what most furniture today is made with. It’s some sort of composites and engineered wood. That’s where it becomes a health issue because these composite woods that have tons of glue and chemicals in them to preserve it called VOC’s (volatile organic compounds). That is the smell that is emitted out of these products and you’re breathing that in. And when you say volatile organic compounds those are synthetic chemicals. Obviously you want to try to buy something that has zero or as close to a low VOC that you can.”
“For babies they sell the full collection. You can mix and match different collections. You can do a changing table, dresser, armoire, night stand and obviously the crib. And then you can buy the crib conversions to take them through the different levels. They are all Green Cradle designs and they source the materials. You’re buying them factory direct. Green Cradle sells organic mattresses that they make completely in house. We want to make sure that everything they put in a baby’s room that your child is sleeping on is something that is clean and something they would put their own child on, which they have. Regarding other kids and teens it’s the same concept. Instead of starting from the crib and basinet you start from the bedroom set. You start from what they’re sleeping on. A lot of the products we sell are more expensive than the conventional stores because more of their things are coming from China and made from composite wood. You really can’t compete against American labor, solid wood, sourced in America, made in America and finished with an oil finish that has no synthetics and no VOC’s. Now compare it to something that comes from China, Asia or other countries that has composite wood, foreign labor, etc. They can make it cheaper and faster but the quality is not there. That’s why if you look at antiques why do they last 300-500 years or more? The reason is because they use old school solid wood, metal screws, etc. They’ll use the same natural oil finishes. It’s an heirloom piece that will last for years. Whereas if you buy something from composite woods it should instead be called disposable furniture because you literally have to get rid of it after a few years when it falls apart.”
“Regarding the kids’ furniture, a lot of the parents already have items so they take it in steps according to how much they want to spend. You can’t always just change everything in your house. It gets expensive. So the number one thing we always tell people to start with is the mattress. You spend 1/3 of your life in bed. You want to make sure that the sheets are organic bedding. But the main thing is the actual mattress because your body is touching it. There are possible fumes coming out of it depending on which kind it is. As they move on to furniture then they get a bed. And even if they don’t buy other furniture from Green Cradle at least we educate them where to buy it, what to look for and what to avoid. They might be looking for a different design that we don’t make. But we do make custom furniture in any of the wood pieces. We can replicate or modify pieces however people want. We work with a lot of designers that have a concept in mind. The designers say sometimes that something is an inspiration piece and they want it made a certain way. Can we modify a headboard, for example, to be taller or thicker and could we use real walnut not some sort of stained walnut or a veneer which is what the other companies are selling? Or they want upholstered furniture which we also do. And our upholstered furniture will have organic latex inside the wool or whatever upholstery fabric they want. We also work with parents. They sometimes get inspired because they love a bedroom set from some company but they want to make their own adjustments. They tell us what they like and they design it in our system. We give them a full line drawing before we make it so they know exactly what they’re going to get. And then we make it to that effect. And they can choose whatever wood they want including, for example, a combination of walnut and oak or maple and cherry. It will be a little more expensive obviously than the regular conventional products. But if you think about it, how often do you buy furniture? If you buy conventional furniture you buy it maybe once every 7-8 years because it starts to fall apart. You have to pay approximately half the amount for conventional furniture but the solid wood furniture is going to outlast it many years longer. You’re doing an investment for a long term.”
“For adults it’s the same thing regarding the most important furniture to start with. The mattress is number one. Number 2 is bedding. 3 is furniture when they’re ready. We educate our customers what to look for and what to avoid. On our website there are a lot of good resources you can read up on. There is a link on what to look for and what to avoid when buying furniture. It’s pretty lengthy but it will give you everything and anything you ever wanted to know. If someone tries to sell you “natural” plywood or composite wood now you can be fully equipped to really ask what the heck is it? The different online search engines are much more sophisticated than they were 20 years ago. So you can go online now and actually do your own research. You can type in the keywords and find out exactly what the real difference is. And the information I’m giving you now is a small fraction of the information we know. People also come to us all the time and ask if we door flooring, carpeting or paint? Do you do building materials? We have experience in that and are able to source the materials for our customers, contractors and designers. We have access to all of that.”
“The most popular mattress we sell is called Milk Bed. There are 3 different ones and the type depends who it’s for. The 3 different ones are the dual layer, the tri layer and the quad layer. Those are our best selling mattresses depending on who they’re for. For kids the dual and tri layer are the most popular. How it works is that inside you have 3 layers of organic latex. And those layers can be either firm, medium or soft. There are some people who change their minds once they bring the new mattress home and sleep on it for awhile. They decide they want a mattress that is either more or less firm. For our brand you don’t need to change the mattress. Our mattresses have a zipper encasement and you can unzip it and it has layers inside. Each layer has organic latex and each is about 3 inches thick. Each layer can be soft, medium, firm or extra firm if somebody needs it. The idea behind the layer system is that it allows you to open the mattress and re-stack it however you want it. You can have soft on top, medium in the middle and firm on the bottom. That is a softer configuration. You can adjust it to have the medium or firm layer on top and softer layers lower. These mattresses are warranted for 20+ years and they last for 20 years. Over the course of those years your body will change and this mattress can change with you as long as you protect them with a mattress pad to prevent moisture from getting in there or if you have an accident and spill something, for example. We also sell the mattress pads that are organic cotton. And if you need extra protection like with small children, for example, you can put on a wool moisture pad on top of the mattress and then a quilted organic mattress pad which goes over a fitted sheet with another fitted sheet on top. For small accidents the cotton mattress pad takes care of 99% of it. So these can prevent liquids from getting through to the mattress. You can remove and wash the cotton mattress cover separately very easily. Whenever you buy something that says waterproof it means that there is some sort of a plastic liner inside. So what does that mean? It means it’s made with chemicals. Body heat and moisture can break it down but the bigger thing is breathability. Imagine taking a big trash can bag and wrapping it around your mattress. What’s going to happen is that you’re going to start sleeping hot because it’s not breathable. Our mattress pad is organic cotton and wool. And organic cotton is as breathable as it gets. Whatever goes through the cotton then the wool moisture pad repels the moisture and keeps it on the surface. Wool actually helps regulate body temperature which is super important. Whether it’s a baby or adult, if they overheat they don’t sleep as well. So you want to make sure that when you’re buying bedding it has to be breathable. You can’t put something that says waterproof or use a waterproof mattress because it’s plastic. Besides the synthetics and chemicals there are breathability issues.”
“What sets our brand apart from other competitors in this arena is that 1) we only source all organic materials. And 2) When we are sourcing it most of our products are going to be here in America. Sometimes we can’t get it to be made in America so occasionally we’ll get it, for example, from India. But that factory and the raw materials are going to be certified organic. Because we can’t do everything and anything, we focus on a lot of things we do really well. But other things we will sometimes outsource to have them made to our standards. When customers come to our store they can let down their guard and know that it’s all clean. They often get tired of doing all this research and after awhile they give up and just want the easiest solution. If you walk into a conventional mattress store what they’re mostly selling is all synthetics- memory foam, polyester, whatever…and they say ‘this is great because it gives you good posture support. It’s made here in the US.’ All this sounds really good. Imagine if you put an organic mattress in there. How do you sell just one organic mattress compared to the other 99% that are synthetic? Our organic mattresses range in price from about $2500-$4000. If you go into a decent conventional mattress store the average price will be around $2000-$3000. So we’re about there. But imagine if you go into that store and you ask if they have anything organic. They will point you to the organic mattress. When a customer asks what’s the difference, the salesperson says this one has organic, wool, cotton, latex, it’s made in the US, there are no fire retardant chemicals, no synthetics, etc. The consumer will think if these are all the components of an organic mattress then they might question what are the things used in a non-organic mattress. Then they find out they have synthetics, fire retardants and chemicals, etc. So if these stores are selling one good natural product it could potentially kill the rest of their business. For many of these companies out there that are selling a lot of conventional products it is about 98% of the business. For an organic store this industry is growing. With more awareness there is more growth. But in this industry it’s more difficult now because the volume is not as high and it’s not there yet. A lot of more organic companies have been struggling because they’re dependent on these larger companies to sell their products and their products are not pushed as much as the conventional mattress companies. The other issue is that if they’re going to be a store that just focuses on all natural the volume is not there.”
“Another issue is that most organic companies don’t make their own products. They have to outsource. So what happens in a down economy? From 2008-2012 the organic industry got smaller. There is not a huge difference in the cost of the products, raw materials and manufacturing. The main thing between our products and other larger mid range stores is that we were manufacturing our own products. Around 2010 they were manufacturing their own products but wanted to be more competitive. So how do they become more competitive? They outsource it to China or different parts of Asia where it’s cheaper. So they close the factories in the US and outsource all of it. They bring in the products that are cheaper to make but the quality goes down. So after the quality went down and when they tried to move those products people were not really buying them. The reason people bought their products before was because they were made from solid wood, finished with natural materials, sourced in North America, manufactured in America, etc. And that is a big thing. Made in USA will always have a premium because of the higher quality. There are more rules and regulations. So you know that you’ll be paying a little extra but it’s worth it. So after awhile a number of these companies realized they made a mistake and wanted to bring manufacturing back to the US. But the people and factories who worked for them are no longer around. Now these companies will have to start from scratch and they can’t. And in a bad economy they would often go out of business. So as a company owner myself,” said Edward, “that was really important to me. I did not want to rely on foreign companies to produce for me or source my materials from overseas. The biggest example during COVID was that everything got shut down. A lot of those shipping containers were sitting on the water for several months. They couldn’t get the ships to come in. But if I kept manufacturing in America it was just business as usual. Since we started in 2006 we’ve been growing. And it takes awhile to manufacture a particular product. You have to spend a good amount of research, time, money, find the resources and figure out where to source it from. Then we have to go through testing phases. There are a lot of rules and regulations from the Consumer Products Safety Commission we have to follow. And those regulations continuously get changed. Each time you have to test out a new crib, for example, it costs $5,000-$10,000 for us to pay as the manufacturers. We are responsible from the ground up. We start with the design and the prototype. There is a 3rd party entity that is responsible for doing 3rd party testing. There are thick rules and regulations books. We started developing our products and over the years we figured out how to do it the right way. And that’s how our company grew and we kept adding additional products. We sell about 99% of our products within the US and all over the country.” According to Edward there are only a handful of companies that sell products like Green Cradle but he says “those companies don’t have the same high standards that we do. There are ways to cut corners to make a product less expensive. They can outsource it and have it made overseas or sometimes, for example, use a finish that they sometimes use where they spray on a bunch of polyurethane which is cheaper and faster. There are other companies that try to get in this ‘eco’ environment but there are different levels of eco. The good news in this industry is that the more there is increased awareness and the more there are products that are made in the US then it will continue growing.” For additional information on Green Cradle and their products please click on the links here in this post.