She and Her Mother Built an 8-Figure Business Around a Beloved Family Heirloom. Now, the Legacy Continues: ‘So Much Bigger Than Just a Product.’

Growing up, a special blanket — soft, oversized and covered with lambs — was a fixture in Christina Livada’s family home. “My mom passed it down to my brother and me,” Livada tells Entrepreneur. “We called it Lamby, and it was everyone’s favorite blanket. We all fought over it.” 

Livada’s mother, Beth Haller LaSala, searched far and wide for a comparable blanket over the years, but kept coming up empty-handed. That’s when a running joke began; someone in the family needed to start a blanket business. 

In 2006, Haller LaSala did just that, starting the business in Boston: ChappyWrap, named for Chappaquiddick Island in homage to its coastal New England roots, was born. 

A family heirloom inspires a business: ChappyWrap

Although there were plenty of beautiful blankets on the market, they didn’t have the softness and durability the Lamby blanket had. “ It was obviously really well-made,” Livada explains. “It was truly an heirloom that had been passed through generations of our family.” 

Haller LaSala set out to find a manufacturer who could recreate her family’s beloved blanket.

“Most of the products on the market in the U.S. have become 100% polyester or polar fleece,” Livada says. “You actually can’t make blankets like ours anywhere in the States because the equipment doesn’t exist anymore. It’s kind of become a dying art.” 

So Haller LaSala connected with a mill in Germany to manufacture her blankets — a partnership that remains today, 20 years later. 

For ChappyWrap’s first 12 years, Haller LaSala took a “boots on the ground” approach to business growth. She brought the blanket to trade shows and school fundraisers, spreading the word one sale at a time. 

Back then, Livada was attending graduate school for speech-language pathology, but she often helped with the business on weekends. Ultimately, Livada’s decision to join the business full-time was a “total 180” and “scary leap of faith,” but her passion for a product with deep family roots won out. 

Today, Livada serves as ChappyWrap’s president and CEO.

Quitting a job to go all-in on building ChappyWrap

Livada quit her job and dedicated herself to ChappyWrap in 2018. “I joined because I saw the opportunity to build a brand,” she says. “ I knew from helping my mom for so many years that people really loved this product the way that I did.  We needed to build a brand around that product and tell our story more effectively.” 

A year of rebranding followed, wherein everything about the business “except for the way we manufacture the product” changed, with a relaunch in June 2019. ChappyWrap pivoted its strategy to direct-to-consumer and ecommerce for the first time and rolled out a new website and products with different sizes and packaging.  

The business picked up quickly, and Livada and her mother continued to wear every hat: answering customer service emails, fixing website bugs, managing marketing and more. 

Livada’s husband, Drake Livada, had a corporate insurance job at the time and would help with ChappyWrap at night and on the weekends. Eventually, as the business continued to scale, he decided to leave that position and join ChappyWrap full-time in 2021. Now, he is ChappyWrap’s COO. 

“What he likes to say is what was going on in my office was a lot more exciting than what was going on in his,” Livada says, “and I also just really needed his help and support.” 

Growing ChappyWrap and the gift of legacy

Last March, Haller LaSala passed away from cancer. It’s been an emotional time as Livada and her husband continue to run the business without her mother, but ChappyWrap has also been “the most amazing gift” to carry on her legacy, Livada says. 

“We make sure that her spirit really lives on in what we’re doing on a daily basis,” Livada says. “She was a really warm person, and the brand and the product at its core is this manifestation of her warmth and comfort. We take a lot of pride and comfort in being able to carry on what she started.” 

Every new employee learns about Haller LaSala during the onboarding process, and one of ChappyWrap’s guiding principles is, “What would Beth do?”

ChappyWrap hired its first full-time employee in 2021 and finished 2025 with a team of 11. This year, ChappyWrap’s biggest in terms of team expansion, that number grew to 19.

Now, ChappyWrap is an eight-figure brand, more than doubling its revenue from 2024, with triple-digit year-over-year growth over the seven years since its relaunch. The brand has sold more than 500,000 blankets to date. 

“With growth comes the opportunity for our blankets to be in more homes and part of more family traditions,” Livada says. “Now, we’re hearing from customers who received a ChappyWrap years ago and have been gifting them to everybody who they know and love. That’s the most exciting part of growth — realizing we’re building something so much bigger than just a product.”