DIDYMOS Wrap Sling – Since 1972
Babies and toddlers all around the world feel safe and secure in wrap slings produced by our family-run company in Ludwigsburg.
We would like to introduce ourselves with this film and give you an insight into our company and our company’s philosophy.
The family business is now managed by Tina Hoffmann. At a tender young age, she and her siblings were one of the main factors in DIDYMOS coming into existence in the first place.
As a modern woman with children in the early 1970s, their mother Erika Hoffmann was looking for a practical and uncomplicated way of keeping her newborn twins and two older children, Anna and Tom, close to her while going about her day-to-day tasks. She was inspired by the illustrated book “Children and their Mothers,” which contained pictures of mothers from around the world, many of whom used cloths to carry their children on their bodies. This reminded her of a Mexican carrying cloth that a well travelled friend had brought back for her.
Without any instructions, she began to try out different ways of carrying her children using the cloth. Soon, the young family wouldn’t be able to imagine everyday life without the children being carried in slings. Ultimately, Erika Hoffmann turned her personal passion into a profession and vocation by setting up DIDYMOS in 1972. As a result, she re-introduced babywearing, a practice she initially adopted for both emotional and practical reasons, to the German-speaking world.
As you can see, the history of DIDYMOS is very closely associated with the personal story of the Hoffmann family. Consequently, the use of a wrap sling to respond to children’s needs, at the time an unusual idea, caught on with a huge number of parents. “Of course, our mother walked around our small village with the sling and we immediately became the talk of the village as a result,” says daughter Anna Hoffmann, who has managed the DIDYMOS brick and mortar store since 1998. It wasn’t long before the press noticed the family. An article in Germany’s Stern magazine in the summer of 1972 led to the Hoffmanns being inundated with letters from all over Germany.
This short video clip shows Erika Hoffmann when she explains how everything started. The following video is a montage of shoots done in November 2014. It was published in 2015.
Read the timeline to see how DIDYMOS has worked tirelessly over the decades to produce high-quality slings with beautiful designs, create a practical sizing system, devise other baby carriers, and come up with different ways of fastening them. And discover what a challenge it was finding partners to weave environmentally friendly fabrics from fairly produced raw materials in the 1970s ...
