A Lakeland woman's invention is now being sold across the world.

  • Lakeland woman invented Go Pillow
  • The portable pillow is used for breast-feeding
  • The product is being sold around the world

Tangela Walker-Craft said her Go Pillow was approved for a patent on the first try, which she said is unheard of.

It's a multi-purpose, wearable, portable pillow with a re-tractable blanket, commonly used for breast-feeding, or cradling a baby.  Walker-Craft came up with the idea 12 years ago, when her now 15-year-old daughter was a toddler.

"A rainy day, caught where they sell the turkey legs at Disney World, surrounded by people and me being a modest mom and not liking to breast-feed in front of strangers and my husband taking his shirt off and me saying there has to be a better way to do this," said Walker-Craft. "And that's kind of what sparked the idea for the Go Pillow.”  

After she got the patent, Walker-Craft began selling it to friends and online.  After the television shows stopped calling, sales slowed down, and she wanted to find a way to sell the pillow to a broader audience.

"We were selling it to Canada through my website, but a lot of the other countries we didn't have the ability to send the product to because of the customs cost."

The high cost of getting her product through customs led her to look for a global manufacturer and distributor. That led her to the Canadian company Kushies Baby. She sent them an email and she said within minutes, one of its female executives responded.

Three years later, after slightly tweaking the invention to fit their brand, Walker-Craft signed a licensing agreement with the company,  giving them the right to sell her invention. She gets a percentage of every sale.

"I feel validated because I worked hard at it for so many years,” she said. "I really honestly from day one wanted the Go Pillow to be the number one childcare product in the world. At some points, I kind of doubted that it could happen. But based on working with them, and knowing their reach, seeing all of the countries they sell products in I think it might actually happen.”

Kushies Baby started selling the product on its website this summer. It’s also sold on Amazon.