“When I moved back to Michigan in 2015, that experienced weighed heavy on my heart, said Kristock, Founder and Executive Director of Fleece & Thank You, a children’s charity dedicated to providing comfort and hope through innovative programs and materials for children who are facing illness.

When a serendipitous text message arrived from Kristock’s twin sister (a pediatric oncologist), asking him to make a blanket for a child who was in the hospital, his curiosity was instantly piqued. “I asked her how many blankets she needed and how often,” Kristock remembers. “Her answer was: Nick, we always need blankets; they dramatically change a patient’s room and we never have enough of them.”

In Michigan alone, roughly 30,000 children go into the hospital annually and have to stay overnight. Along with providing a colorful, comfortable blanket to these kids, Kristock also wanted to help close the isolation gap that exists when someone is in the hospital, and particularly when those stays extend past a week or so. He came up with the idea of video messaging from the person who was sending the blanket, and the opportunity for the child to respond back.

The rest, as they say, is history. Since its founding in 2015, 5-employee Fleece & Thank You has worked with every hospital in Michigan plus those in 47 other states and 12 countries. For its first few years in existence, Fleece & Thank You was running on manual systems, spreadsheets, and outside solutions like ShipStation. “We had other solutions that were pieced together to make a pseudo-ERP,” Kristock added, “but they were all segmented.”