Roger Schlaifer Coca-Cola, Rushton Toys and IBM. In 1978 Schlaifer branded an early jogging-shoe roller-skate as Hot Rollers and licensed the Hot Roller brand for kids’ apparel, skates and fashion accessories which sold at stores such as Bloomingdales, Belk’s and Mervyn’s. Building on the success of his licensing Hot Rollers, in 1981 Schlaifer proposed an exclusive, worldwide licensing agreement with Xavier Roberts’ company, Original Appalachian Artworks, for the rights to "Little People" soft sculpture dolls and Babyland General Hospital. Schlaifer rebranded the "Little People" dolls as Cabbage Patch Kids. In addition to signing up Coleco Industries on August 9, 1982, as its
Xavier Roberts in a process known as soft sculpture. He even took her idea of issuing adoption certificates for each doll. Drawing on the early German craft of needle sculpting, and from quilting skills learned from his mother, Roberts created a line of hand-crafted dolls he called, "Little People". He and a group of friends began travelling from state to state in the southeastern United States attending craft fairs and folk art exhibitions. At them, he began selling these handcrafted dolls. He won awards for his work, including a first-place ribbon for a doll named Dexter at the Osceola Craft Show in