The sisters were eight and 10 years old when they emigrated from Poland with their single mother to live in the suburbs of Detroit. They knew no one and didn’t speak English. Life was tough in the low-income neighborhood where they lived and they would sometimes skip school to help their mother clean houses and offices.
Joanna Serra and Barbara Kent depended on the community they say “saved” them: the teachers and counselors at their schools, other immigrants, and the Polish Girl Scouts. And, Serra recalls, their mother pushed them. “She told us, ‘I brought you girls to this country and you’re going do something with that opportunity,’” Serra said. “We understood that through education, we could have a better life.”
The sisters seized that opportunity. Serra attended Wayne State University and became a fifth-grade teacher and Michigan’s 2019 Charter School Teacher of the Year, while her sister Barbara Kent attended West Point and was deployed as a military police officer until she was injured and medically discharged from the Army. Today, with the help of Amazon’s tools and programs, the two women are co-founders of a prosperous small business, Birdy Boutique, a textile manufacturer of car seat ponchos that is scaling faster than they can sew. Once a handmade product they sold to friends, in 2023, Birdy Boutique sales grew in the Amazon store at an extraordinary rate of 674%.
In 2014, when a birth injury with her first child left her temporarily unable to walk, Serra found comfort in regular phone calls with her sister, then living in Germany with her active-duty husband. While discussing the dilemma of how to safely keep babies warm in car seats while avoiding the dangerous use of puffy coats, the sisters devised what would become Birdy Boutique’s signature product: the Car Seat Poncho. Kent, an ardent sewer, quickly put together a prototype with a bit of fleece and a lot of love. From across the Atlantic, the sisters launched their business, first selling to friends and soon taking custom orders on Etsy. Demand grew and within months, Birdy Boutique turned to Amazon to drive sales.
“Amazon was a game-changer,” Serra said. “Amazon allowed us to reach millions of moms right away, all at once.” They steadily expanded their product offerings to include double-sided “learning blankets” with words and educational facts about themes like women’s history. Serra explained, “Education is the heart of what we do.”
2017 was a pivotal year for Birdy Boutique and its partnership with Amazon. With sales soaring, Serra and Kent began using Fulfillment by Amazon (FBA), which allowed them to outsource their order fulfillment to Amazon specialists who packed and shipped their orders. What began as a two-person operation in 2014 today consists of 24 employees, all women, nearly all of whom are mothers. The majority are Michigan-based at their primary US printing facility in Auburn.
Serra and Kent are active users in Amazon’s Small Business Academy, which offers online courses, on-demand and live educational content, and a community for aspiring and existing entrepreneurs. As part of that program, Amazon recently featured Kent and Serra in its Founders Table video series, focusing on their school and sports Fundraiser Blankets®, which help more than 3,000 schools nationwide raise money for worthy causes in 2023. “We are so happy to be able to now give back to school communities the way they supported us when we came to this country,” Serra said.
With Amazon’s help, Birdy Boutique anticipates steady growth in 2024. Serra and Kent are currently testing sustainable recycled polyester from plastic bottles as their primary fabric. Their personal and professional charitable work continues to focus on education and community; one of their first Fundraiser Blankets® was made for the Polish Girl Scouts in Detroit.
Serra explains, “You don’t have to be ‘somebody’ to achieve the American Dream. You can be anybody. Everybody has a fair chance through hard work and education. Both paid off for us. When the opportunity arose, we took it and, with Amazon’s help, we made our business grow.”