Cliff Grassmick Susan Hiller of Boulder has started her own company, Created 4 Me, which publishes personalized children's books.

Created 4 Me books are customized for each child

By Sarah Toland, For the Camera
March 22, 2004

Often, inspiration for our best ideas materializes out of the most unrelated events. Susan Hiller was watching "The Late Show with David Letterman" last year when she conceived the concept for a children's book that would emphasize the letters of a child's individual name.

Hiller was attracted to the marquee that highlighted the title of the show at the beginning of the program, and she imagined headlining a child's name in a similar style — in lights on a signboard as if the words announced a theater production.

Less than a year later, Hiller founded the children's book company Created 4 Me, and the Boulder resident begin selling the upshot of her Letterman inspiration out of a home office — a personalized children's book she called "My Name in Lights."

Although "The Late Show" may have been the visual inspiration for "My Name in Lights," the creative stimulus for the personalized children's book came to Hiller sometime in November 2002.

"I was buying a lot of newborn baby gifts, and I could never find the right one," says Hiller, who has two sons, Charlie and Dannie. "There were lots of personalized children's books, but none that were colorful. I started to toy with the idea and jotted some thoughts down on paper."

The rest was history for Hiller upon seeing "The Late Show" signboard. In November, she launched the limited liability corporation, Created 4 Me, and activated an e-commerce Web site at www.created4me.com. Hiller began taking orders online for "My Name in Lights" after Thanksgiving. The former sports publicist, who left her position as director of communications with the College Football Association in Gunbarrel to spend more time with her children, processes online orders for Created 4 Me out of an office within her East Boulder home.

"Creating the Web site was a complicated process," says Hiller, "and I was fortunate to find (Johanna Ohlsson) in Boulder."

Ohlsson, technical partner for OP2 Design and Development in Boulder, designed the programming and e-commerce for www.created4me.com and continues to work with Hiller on the dynamic needs of the site.

"I think (Created 4 Me) is a great idea," Ohlsson says. "I'm also a mom, and I've bought a lot of personalized children's books. But (Hiller's) book is very special and well done. This is something unique. (And) the illustrations are beautiful."

To find the right illustrator, Hiller spent much of the last fall researching area artists before deciding on Bob Fuller, a Denver-based illustrator whose resume includes work for Russ-Berrie.

"I talked to art students," Hiller says. "I looked online. But when I told Bob the idea, in a minute he was able to draw out the characters, and I knew right away I wanted him to illustrate the book. He was very quick and worked night and day. He was very determined."

Fuller created 75 "stage illustrations," or renditions of words whose first letter is in the child's name, that Hiller now owns for "My Name in Lights." For example, if a child's name is Ashley Madison Smith, the first page of the book will feature the letter "A" in Ashley, with three words on the opposite page framed by a stage that also start with the letter A: Apple, Alligator and Airplane. The next page will feature the letter "S" and so on until the entire name of the child is spelled out.

Overall, there are four sets of three illustrations for each vowel in the child's name and three sets of three illustrations for each consonant (excluding the seldom-used V, X, Y and Z). Therefore, if the same letter repeats in a child's name, the book will present different sets of words.

"There's no name we can't accommodate," says Hiller, who notes that orders taken to date have included middle names, hyphenated names and one last name of 17 characters. The book can hold 35 pages, to which, Hiller thinks, a few more sheets could be added if necessary.

Hiller says her book, which retails for $33.95, is great as a gift for newborns or as a didactic device for preschoolers who are learning to read.

"("My Name in Lights") is a tool for children to spell their name and learn simple words," Hiller says. "Since the book is centered around the name, it draws their attention because it's about them. It's letter recognition and learning objects."

"The book sounds like a helpful thing for getting kids to read and attracted to books," says Jennifer Martin, publisher and editor of the newsprint quarterly Boulder Country Kids. "When kids start to read, it opens up their entire world. (Hiller) has her heart in the right place and her business seems to have come out of that."

Boulder County Kids will feature a brief on Created 4 Me in its upcoming May issue. Colorado Parent, a statewide parenting publication based in Greenwood Village, is also running a short article on Hiller for its next April issue.

" 'My Name in Lights' has something for everyone: It's a great way for a family member to give the child a unique, personalized gift— a keepsake," says Kelly Smith, editor of Colorado Parent. "The child receives a cool gift, and kids love to see their own name spelled out. We're happy to introduce her work to our readers."

Currently, "My Name in Lights" is available online at the Created 4 Me Web site, but Hiller says she is considering other marketing strategies that would put brochures for the book in preschools and bookstores. Interested customers can also purchase a poster online that features all the letters of the alphabet, what Hiller calls the "Cast of Characters," for $10.95.

To date, Hiller has processed and sold approximately 250 books, which her husband Richard binds in their home basement after work on a self-bought binding machine. The 43-year old Hiller has enough hardback covers and pages to compile 2,500 books, a goal she hopes to obtain by the end of this year.

"I think sales have been great," says Hiller, who says orders have been placed nationwide, in addition to international requests from England and France. "We have not had a day in the last three weeks where an order hasn't come in. I was actually overwhelmed in the beginning because people were ordering so many books."

Contact Sarah Toland at sarahtoland@yahoo.com.

Copyright 2004, The Daily Camera. All Rights Reserved.

Reprinted with permission.