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NORTON - Wet babies are slippery.

It was a common sense thing Kim Shulman hadn't really thought of until she had her own little one to bath.

Her son, Charlie, now 3, proved to be trouble for the new parents Shulmans, Kim's husband is David, during bath time.

"We just had a problem where he was slippery in the tub," Shulman said.

So the couple took the advice of a Dad's parenting magazine and cut a hole in a sock and tried to get a grip on little Charlie that way. "But it was sopping wet and a mess," Shulman said. "I needed something else, and I searched everywhere, in stores and on the Internet. I didn't find anything."

And that's how No Slip Charlie, a bathing glove parents can use to keep a hold on their babies during bath time, was born.

Sort of.

Never having entertained the idea of going into business for herself, Kim Shulman's product, which as this story is being written is arriving in the hands of Angelina Jolie in a celebrity baby gift bag, was born of her personal necessity.

Unable to find something suitable for purchase, she made the first NSC herself - out of poly lycra - after discovering Charlie could keep still on her tankini top.

"I always would bath him in my tankini top," Shulman said. "He didn't slip on the swimsuit fabric. From there, it just kind of rolled."

Shulman officially formed MomSense in November 2007, then debuted No Slip Charlie at the March 2008 American Baby Faire, the nation's largest baby expo.

It was her first time making the product available to the general public.

"I would have been happy to sell one," she said, adding that sold what was to her an impressive 35 pairs of gloves. "It went quite well."

The final product, which retails for $20, put Shulman into the entrepreneurial business after she started networking with other moms on blogs. Positive feedback inspired her to keep making the gloves better and more marketable, and soon enough, she had the blue and pink themed gloves, which are packaged with a smiling Charlie Shulman on the front.

The gloves are, for now, available exclusively on the MomSense Web site.

Unless you're a celebrity. And that's a good thing.

No Slip Charlie gloves are being packaged in mommy gift bags for celebrities by the company Baby Swags, which gifts products from women owned small businesses to celebrity mothers.

Besides Jolie, No Slip Charlie also was recently delivered to Nicole Kidman.

"This is very exciting," said Shulman. "You get to pick the celebrities you want to gift. Angelina Jolie is quite an incredible woman when it comes to mothering. There's a lot to be admired. Plus, you want to get a thank-you note from someone everyone knows."

Though she does have a couple other products in mind she'll develop in the future, Shulman, for now, is happy to be successfully getting No Slip Charlie off the ground.

And that's not easy when she's a mom and works fulltime in early childhood education. To be fair, she says, she credits her "very wonderful, helpful, and supportive husband" with making it possible.

"And that's very, very true," Shulman said. "This is so fun and interesting. I'm just really challenging myself right now, and learning something different at a stage in life where I never expected to be trying something different."

REBECCA KEISTER can be reached at 508-236-0336 or at rkeister@thesunchronicle.com.