Charlotte Chapman is a 20 year old student from New York City. Her grandmother taught her how to sew at an early age and whenever Charlotte visited, she loved to pitch in and sew items for her grandmother's business. Charlotte started taking her sewing and design skills and using them to construct garments for competitions, dance costumes, clothes for friends and family and even her prom dress. She is currently attending Cornell University studying Fashion Design and Management, with a minor in Business. She says, "I love making something new that someone is going to love. That's the best part of sewing; getting to share your talents with the people around you."
Charlotte continues sewing garments and uses her sewing skills to give back to her community by sewing and donating CDC compliant face masks and donating reusable sanitary pads to young women in Africa.
Charlotte came up with the idea for these sleeves when she was in 6th grade aiming to solve an environmental issue. She gifted them to friends, family and teachers but never thought of selling them. During the first few months of Covid-19 pandemic, Charlotte visited coffee shops and began using the sleeves in order to avoid touching the cup. "One less point of direct hand contact will keep you safer." With some minor adjustments to the pattern to cover more of the cup, Sip Safely was born.
Our goal is to create a product that is both fashion forward and environmentally friendly. With the objective of not bringing anything new into the world, the majority of fabric used to make the sleeves is recycled or vintage material.
Every year cardboard coffee sleeves create 2.8 billion pounds of waste so we thought "how can we help alleviate this issue?" Personally, I purchase multiple coffees a day and I estimated how much cardboard I was wasting by using disposable coffee sleeves. I wanted to find a better solution. The sleeves were created to fit most sizes of hot and cold coffee cups and come in all kinds of colors and designs! They fasten with velcro and can be adjusted to size.
In addition to our website, you can find our products in markets and shops along the Jersey Shore!