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Birdy Boutique | Fundraiser Blankets

Creating Products with Purpose

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Fundraiser Blankets
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2022 Veteran Business "VBEOY" of the Year

Birdy Boutique is a proud certified disabled-veteran and women-owned small Michigan textile manufacturing business founded by an army veteran and military spouse.

Founders of Learning Blankets® and Fundraiser Blankets®, their consumer “Products with Purpose” are educational, meaningful and give back through initiatives such as FundraiserBlankets.com. With two main divisions, wholesale and private label, their capabilities include designing, printing, and manufacturing custom textile products for small and large customers. Veteran Threads, an entity powered by Birdy Boutique, focuses on private label textiles for corporate and government sectors.

Our proud team of 20+ women consisting of moms, sisters, retired teachers, veterans, and military spouses, who are the creative inspiration behind our brand.

Our goal is to create purpose by helping children learn, therefore building confidence and independence with our exclusively designed textile products such as car seat ponchos, learning & fundraiser blankets, educational tapestries, and more!

Our retailer partnerships include Meijer, Walgreens and Harris Teeter.

Joanna and Barbara are sister owners of Birdy Boutique. They immigrated to the United States from Poland as children in 1988. Watching their mother perform hard physical work to put food on the table, they learned that hard work and determination can equal success. Education was of utmost importance and both sisters pursued college degrees and began conventional jobs immediately after graduation.  When the career paths changed for both sisters, sewing projects for their own children quickly turned into a small business. Since these two are bird lovers, initially their shop only consisted of items with birds on them. Unfortunately, they quickly learned that not everyone loves birds as much as they do. They pushed forward with their ideas and now have a variety of childrens' items in unique designs and patterns you won't find elsewhere.

The two founder sisters who came from very disadvantaged school systems and knew they missed out on a lot because their school didn’t have the money to offer extras, therefore creating a passion and mission in education. Beyond the consumer and wholesale educational textiles, a gap that the business filled in the industry, Birdy Boutique | Fundraiser Blankets owners developed an initiative that helped with funding in schools nationwide. Months of planning and research were realized into a program that now helps schools fundraise in a very affordable way by offering useful and profitable items. These are customized spirit blankets which are becoming very popular with schools as the traditional overpriced foods and plastic toys offer significantly lower value and profit margins. This newest division, FundraiserBlankets.com™, offers schools a way to customize blankets and then sell them easily at a very high profit to raise funds for programs and resources they need. This initiative recently became the quickest growing division for the company.

Birdy Boutique | Fundraiser Blankets has been featured in hundreds of publications from CNN, MSN, Forbes and most recently Amazon Founders Table, Episode 2 and StartUP USA, Season 11, Episode 7.

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MEET OUR FOUNDERS

Barbara Jozwik Kent
Barbara Kent | Founder & CEO | Germany

Barbara is a retired and service-disabled Army officer and veteran of almost 15 years. She is wife to an active duty Army Engineer, mom to two very busy "almost" teenagers and a very clumsy German Shepherd puppy named Hans. Their family has recently been stationed in Alaska, Hawaii, and Virginia. They currently reside in Germany, her husband's latest duty assignment. Barbara graduated from the United States Military Academy at West Point in 1999. She went on to honorably serve in the US Army Military Police Corps for 13 years, after which she was medically retired and disabled by the Department of Veterans Affairs. She loves her sewing machine, traveling, good food and wine. Barbara is an active member of several Army spouses’ clubs which raise scholarship funds for military kids and help the active duty military communities in many other ways!

Joanna Jozwik Serra
Joanna Serra | Founder & COO | Michigan

Joanna is a proud married mama of three little ones and a loving rescue named Silo. She lives on an old farm in Michigan where she loves birding, photography, exploring, teaching, her Instant Pot and scoring good deals. Her true passion is teaching and her efforts have earned her much recognition, specifically at State level. Joanna graduated from Wayne State University with a Bachelor of Science in Elementary Education; she also began her Master of Art in Educational Leadership at the University of Michigan. She taught elementary aged children and during this tenure, she earned some of the highest and most distinguished awards in her field at the state level. Her initiative and determination, combined with love for her field, allowed her to be a leader in every working environment she took part in. Joanna loves organizing fundraising events and staying very involved in her local community for the benefit of children.

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