Baabaazuzu, a company in Lake Leelanau which recycles sweaters into clothing items and accessories, is growing despite of the the economy. And it all started with a mistake, or a laundry error if you will.

Sue Burns the co-owner and founder of  Baabaazuzu said "It resulted in a pile of shrunken sweaters. That weren't just any sweaters they were my beloved sweaters. So I decided I couldn't part with them and went to salvage them by going back to my graphic design degree and the years I had spent growing up behind a sewing machine and cut them apart and artfully pieced them back together."

After sending her two young daughters to school in her new creations. Sue realized that her dryer mishap may just be a marketable product, and boy was she right.

"We're in nine-hundred stores currently across the United States into Canada and doing some business in Japan," says Burns.

Baabaazuzu continues to thrive despite the economy, Sue says, because her products make people feel good.

Made entirely in Michigan with a full time staff of nearly twenty, Baabaazuzu hires locally yet thinks globally.

Burns continues to think of new ways to stay green.  "We get our wool from a salvage company down south and they collect, sort, bail, and semi three-thousand pounds per month to us which we process right here under our roof at Baabaazuzu."

That breaks down to about thirty six thousand pounds or eighteen tons of waste per year being re-purposed and saved from becoming waste in our landfills.