Update April 2013: Creations has gone out of business. Below is an archived review.
Web: CreationsBaby.com
If you owned an adult furniture company, launching a nursery collection should be a slam dunk, right? After all, furniture is furniture—dressers and cribs aren’t too far removed from adult beds and dressers?
So thought the folks at furniture giant Home Meridian International (home of such furniture brands as Pulaski and Samuel Lawrence Furniture, SLF), which launched Creations back in 2007 with a former executive of Baby’s Dream. The goal was to make nursery furniture that was more like adult furniture—Creation’s dressers are 21” deep (as are most adult dressers) versus the 18” seen in most juvenile furniture. Creations dressers have full-extension drawers, dust proofing under each drawer and wood-on-wood glides—again, mimicking adult furniture.
Unfortunately, Home Meridian quickly learned some hard lessons about the nursery furniture business. First, most nursery furniture is sold as special orders (parents who want this model in that finish). Second, the retailers in the high-end nursery business are still dominated by small mom-and-pop retailers, not large chains (Creations is sold in Buy Buy Baby under the name Lullabye CoCo Bear, but not Babies R Us). In order to succeed in this market, you must run a tight ship at your factories.
In a nutshell, Creations bombed. The brand’s launch was a disaster, with quality problems, delivery delays and worse. So, the company hit the reset button and for a while, things were improving. Then came 2010, and again, the company had a melt-down in production—shipments were late, finishes didn’t match and worse. Many retailers gave up on the brand.
So, now it is time for Creations 3.0. The company replaced its management, hiring industry veteran Kevin Walker (formerly with Pali, and Young America by Stanley) to right the ship. Walker shifted production to factories that specialize in juvenile furniture (Creations at first tried to do production in Pulaski’s adult furniture plants, which was a disaster). Cribs are now in stock and the company’s three Vietnam factories are churning out good quality with finishes that match.
The company has also hired a new designer, who clearly brings a traditional/conservative eye to the brand. And in the past year, Creations lowered prices, with most Creations cribs in the $500 to $700 range. Dressers are $600 to $800. Finishes are limited—most groupings only have one or two options.
New for 2013, Creations is debuting a line of upholstered glider rockers that will retail in the $300 to $500 range. The chairs feature fully padded sides and backs with no exposed wood. At that price, Creations may give the other glider rocker companies a run for their money.
Bottom line: so far, Creations 3.0 has been a success. We can now re-recommend Creations as a good alternative for quality nursery furniture in the moderate price range. Rating: B+
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I purchased a used crib for $40 at a thrift store. It’s heavy heavy and seems good to be quality. However my concern is “are there any recalls, where can I obtain a manual for this specific crib, what hardware will be needed to properly assemble the crib!?” The crib was originally marked $120 and I thought I was getting a deal of a century when I saw it’d been marked down to $40. Not only where all the pieces (I’m assuming anyway) there for the crib but also for the toddler bed and full sized bed conversions. Can anyone help me by helping to to locate details, recalls, safety features/concerns, model name and a manual for this crib? It was manufactured in 2007 by Creations Baby and the model number is 6826-522.
That company is out of business. I don’t believe there were any recalls on this brand, but you can check the CPSC.gov site to do a search. The big concern here is that since you don’t have a manual, you may not know how to correctly assemble the crib. I don’t think the manuals are available on line, since that brand stopped business before such manuals were widely available digitally. Hope that helps!