When the plane landed, I made a couple of phone calls. First, to my good friend and perennial business partner Jo-Ann Robotti. (You can read about Jo-Ann’s background elsewhere, but suffice it to say that a consumer product was much more up her alley than the software ventures we had worked on in the recent past...) She thought it sounded very interesting.

Second, to Gloria McPike Tamlyn. Gloria has spent her life in the fashion industry, so I asked if she knew if anyone had ever done anything with men’s sleepwear? There was a long pause and she replied, "You know, I don't think so, but let me check." She soon reported back that no matter whom she had spoken with, the answer was the same, "...pause... no, it seems no one has ever done anything with men's sleepwear."

I spun through my address book one more time and up came the name "Jerry Mossberg." I had come to know Jerry when we served on a condo board together, and I remembered he owned factories and fabric mills in China. I spoke with Jerry about the concept to see if he would be interested in making Pookies for us. .

Jerry’s reaction was, like so much of this project, unique. He told us that in over 25 years in the industry, he didn’t think he’d ever seen anyone do anything with men’s sleepwear. Despite the fact that we were a small start-up, and Jerry’s factories deal with volume, he said "this is such a neat idea; I’ll do it for you." We explained that we planned on a web-based, direct-to-consumer sales model, and that we had targeted a launch for Spring 2008. Jerry told us we might make it if we started immediately, "if everything goes right, and if we don’t run into Chinese New Year." (He later admitted he hadn’t thought we had a chance...On the other hand, he also admitted that the words "web-based, direct-to-consumer sales model" had meant nothing to him, either.)

It is now 2010, and we have been live for almost two years. We have developed a line of robes, sleepshirts (a completely new take on the nightshirt), sleep shorts and crew shirts for Laissez-Wear, the second brand in our company’s "portfolio." We have an amazing track record of customer satisfaction. And have we ever learned a lot! We embarked upon year two with a new sleepshirt design and color range; there are plenty of new Pookies patterns in the pipeline and with our move to Amazon, our business is growing steadily. Our next great adventure is moving our production from China to New York City's famous garment center. We love the idea of being able to manufacture domestically and keep jobs in the City and believe we can continue to offer our customers great quality and prices and faster new product turnaround. So sign up for our newsletter so you can be kept informed of all our news.

Despite the fact that we did run into Chinese New Year, and at one point had 26,000 yards of fabric bobbing around Shanghai Harbor (luckily, on ships) we did it; and no one, not even me, can believe how it’s all happened.

I have fallen in love with the garment industry: strange, challenging, and even cut-throat, yet so unlike the strange, challenging, and cut-throat world of "Wall Street" where I spent my earlier career. We now have a team of twelve tremendously talented people, all of whom own a piece of the business, all of whom take most of their pay in equity, and all of whom I love working with.

Americans spend approximately 25% of their lives at work, another 15-20% at leisure, and a third asleep. I am delighted to bring you the first apparel company created solely for fun, fashionable, sexy, and comfortable clothing that goes beyond sleepwear to include all those times in life when you are "between" your work clothes and your casual clothes. All of us at DFDesigns are tremendously proud of each item. We hope you will enjoy them and find untold places and times to wear them, and that you share the site with others.

Now if I could just remember who it was who said "You know Joe, sewing could have been a hobby..."