The co-founders of Hello Bello talked about how diapers, parenting and supply chain issues affected them.

On the surface, I was discussing diapers with Kristin Bell and Dax Shepard—especially those made by Hello Bello, the company they co-founded with a few friends—but the conversation quickly turned to the pursuit of abandoning diapers. Do Bell and Shepard have any suggestions for potty training?

For their daughters, 8-year-old Lincoln and 6-year-old Delta, “We did both ends within the toilet training range, and we didn’t do anything different,” she said. When their eldest son is still a toddler, they may claim that they have expertise. "I took her to choose a potty, which was my mother's suggestion," Shepard said. "We said,'Hey, if you want to use it, that's your potty.' She sat on the high chair and said "potty". We took her over and she took off the diaper. We thought we were geniuses."

Bell added that she is an "incredibly responsible" child.

Their youngest child did not follow the same path. "We did the same thing, but she didn't want to leave the diaper," Bell said. "So it depends on the child."

It was a 90-degree fall in Waco, Texas, and I was chatting with Bell and Shepard, where I and a small group of reporters witnessed the grand opening of Hello Bello's first factory. When I told people that I was going to Waco, they eagerly asked if I was going to see Chip and Joanna Gaines. (I didn't.) This proves that Bell and Shepard are a popular couple and I was disappointed because I didn't have a story about Chip and Joanna, which was immediately replaced by urgent questions about the real situation of Kristen and Dax.

This is what I can tell you: Bell and Shepard are a good team. They joked with each other without disturbing each other, and skillfully interrupted each sales promotion with a joke. They can push boundaries-joking about the self-care value of vodka and vibrators, I promise it's fascinating-never let you forget that they are parents first and everything else second.

They seem to really like to talk about their four-year-old company and its goal of providing consumers with "high-quality" baby products at affordable prices. The company's diapers have a series of cute patterns that are updated seasonally. They have expanded to wet wipes, lotions, bath products, sunscreens, supplements and cleaning products, with a special emphasis on sustainability and non-toxic ingredients.

The Waco factory also contains the first Hello Bello retail store (the space was designed by Chip and Joanna Gaines' Magnolia team, so I did get a little Gaines in return) and arranged on the shelves, the packaging is poppies and fascinating busy. "We always say that creativity should be the leader, and it should be chaos and slight chaos, but in chaos is full of fun," Bell said.

Shepard said that his design task is the kind of packaging you can find in the cool West Village baby boutique, and Hello Bello has identified a combination of fashion and tweed that most parents I know cannot resist.

Hello Bello is now the country’s leading subscription diaper bundling service, and it occupies a prominent place on Wal-Mart’s shelves everywhere. Bell can tell the statistics: "Hello Bello started with only 10 products, but now we have hundreds of SKUs, and we have sales in 27,000 stores in seven different countries. We will be in early January Opened in the UK.” Shepard was her target of hype. "Your work is excellent," he interjected.

"Thank you! This building has 312,000 square feet," she continued to show off.

The exterior of Hello Bello's huge new facility is painted with their iconic graphics and is equipped with a custom-made Italian machine that can roll 800 diapers per minute. The layman in the manufacturing process rarely has the opportunity to see such a huge enterprise in operation. When they start the machine, those of us who are typing in the bedroom to make a living are dumbfounded.

Bell and Shepard knew they were the subject of media coverage, but Hello Bello was transitioning from its own factory to domestic manufacturing. At this time, people who usually don't care about trans-Pacific routes and container availability suddenly became interested in supply chain issues.

"This plant allows us to be more independent of all these very complex systems," Shepard said.

This is also a time when people are more widely aware of the challenges that working parents face in paying for necessities such as diapers. Bell said that making diapers more affordable—and finding ways to provide bundled diapers for families who simply can’t afford diapers—has been part of their mission. "This has been important to me from the beginning," she said. "When talking about this, I was blunt to our partners. I have a job and my salary is already too high. I don’t need another salary. So I’m here to be at the table. Sit down, leave my weight behind and make sure we keep rising."

"In 2021 alone, we have seen a 70% increase in households struggling for diapers," she pointed out.

To support these families, Hello Bello launched a diaper Doody fund on their website, similar to a GoFundMe for diapers, where families and organizations can collect donations. A family needs to raise about $800 for a year's worth of diapers; the shipping cost for each order is about $2 to $6.

Bell is also giving away a year's worth of diapers through Hello Bello Instagram every Tuesday, and she asked the winning family to appoint a second family to get a year's supply.

Do all these conversations about diapers make them miss the time they lived in?

"I like changing babies," Shepard said. "I miss it. I don't want to do more, but I miss it very much."