Seven years ago, when her third child was still an infant, Sharon Zumm-Campbell decided it was time to stop picking up her daughter’s toys and time to start putting the baby’s stuffed animals to work.

Her first idea — inspired by her daughter’s Easter birth — was the Bottle Bunny, a plush bunny toy that holds on to baby bottles. The product was developed to give moms a free hand to do other things while their babies are feeding. "Mom holds the baby, the baby holds the bunny and the bunny holds the bottle," says Zumm-Campbell. Rochelle-based Smile Time Inc. now has a full line of plush toys with utility patents for both design and function.

When she first started, Zumm-Campbell commuted to her full-time job as an advertising executive in Charlottesville, reserving evenings and weekends to create Smile Time products. Now, devoted full time to her business, she creates and designs the products but sends manufacturing responsibilities to China.

In the early days, Zumm-Campbell was the sole employee and traveled to trade shows to market to retailers. Now, her husband and children pitch in. She also has catalogs and a Web site, www.smiletime.com, and her products are distributed to 150 stores nationwide. While she wouldn’t give specific figures, Zumm-Campbell says sales are on the rise.

Other toys in the Smile Time stable include Happy Huggers, toys that wrap around children, and Smiling Faces, small, plush toys with expressive faces. Zumm-Campbell plans to continue developing different designs, but her skills are not limited to motherhood and entrepreneurship. She sells oil paintings of Virginia fox-hunting scenes and is writing and illustrating a children’s book that’s unrelated to her product line. "I keep pretty busy," she says.

— Holly M. Rodriguez