Oprah Adds Decatur Business Step Stitches To 2021 Favorite Things List On Amazon

DECATUR, GA — Decatur business Step Stitches made Oprah’s annual Favorite Things list. Owner and retired teacher and social worker Stephanie Dean is a self-taught vintage-style doll maker. She said this all started as a hobby.

This week, Amazon and Oprah revealed the 2021 list featuring must-have gifts for the holidays, including Dean’s handmade Cinnamon Annie doll, which Oprah hand-selected.

“I am feeling excited, nervous, and still processing this,” she told Patch. “I grew up on Oprah and she’s been a fixture, a part of everyday life, so this is exciting. I’m on cloud nine.”

Dean founded Step Stitches in late 2016. After 16 years teaching elementary school in the DeKalb County School District, she switched careers. Dean went back to school for a master’s degree in social work and then launched her new job as a social worker. Always a crafts lover, she said one day she decided to teach herself how to sew. Now the dolls are her full-time job.

“Entrepreneurship fell into my lap,” Dean said. “I created the doll I would have wanted when I was a child.”

What started as a simple social media share organically blossomed into much more. Dean wanted to share her Raggedy Ann Pinterest creation with her Instagram followers, and that’s when the compliments and inquiries started coming in. Everyone wanted to know where they could buy a doll.

Dean said that’s when she put the doll on Etsy and it took off. Now with Amazon adding her dolls to its website, she’s excited for the additional exposure and support.

Amazon provides services to small businesses such as Dean’s. She now has the potential to reach millions of customers.

The impact her dolls have made has been all the motivation she needs to continue, she said. Growing up in the late 1960s, Dean said there weren’t as many options for Black girls, but her mother always found a doll that looked like her. Dean said it’s important that Black girls and boys have toys and dolls that reflect who they see in the mirror.

“When I first started, I got a letter from a white lady who had ordered a brown doll,” Dean said. “She told me her daughter adopted a Black child. She said when she gave the doll to her new granddaughter, the little girl said, ‘It looks like me.’”

She’s received numerous messages just like that from customers all over.

“That’s when I knew it was more than just something I liked to do,” Dean said. “I was having an impact.”

Now the Cinnamon Annie Dolls come in several shades, from dark to light. They also have different dress styles to choose from.

A self-proclaimed doll lover, Dean wanted other children to have the same joyous experience she did growing up, which is why she also self-published “My Best Doll Friend” on Amazon with Kindle Direct Publishing.

“It’s a companion book,” she said. “It takes the reader through the different ways a child can relate to playing with the doll, like riding a bike, having a tea party, all the things I did growing up with my doll.”

She just recently added a coloring book to accompany the children's book.

Her online business has steadily grown, and sales picked up in 2020 during the Black Lives Matter movement.

“More people were searching for Black-owned businesses,” she said.

Dean hopes that with Amazon’s exposure, she’ll be able to develop more dolls and books through her product line.

According to Amazon, this year’s list is the biggest ever and celebrates seven years of Oprah’s Favorite Things exclusively on Amazon. Most of the items on this year’s list are from small businesses, women-owned brands, and businesses owned by people of color.

In the last year, American small- and medium-size businesses selling on Amazon’s store sold more than 3.8 billion products, averaging 7,400 every minute, Amazon reported. For small businesses such as Step Stitches that are on the list, selling on Amazon opens up a whole new customer base and affords an opportunity to dramatically increase sales and grow the brand, Amazon said in a news release.

Find the full Oprah’s Favorite Things list on Amazon right in time for the upcoming holiday season.