Keith: In 1997, our household had simply moved again dwelling from Boise, Idaho the place I used to be working for an advert company. In the future, my daughter positioned a Beanie Child on my shoulder and I observed the way it hugged me. My first thought was to think about a blanket full of these little beans. It might be “the blanket that hugs you again,” which is now our registered trademark. I requested my spouse to make a toddler dimension prototype to indicate round to our neighbors with children. Nobody appreciated it. It was too heavy. I remembered a buddy of ours who’s a particular wants instructor telling me that she used to hug the youngsters with autism and sensory processing dysfunction in her class to calm them down. I gave her the prototype to check out. She got here again the subsequent day saying she wanted extra. From that second on, I knew weighted blankets had been going to be large. I discovered a producer right here in Los Angeles and began making them. We referred to as our new enterprise The Unique Beanie Blanket Firm however Ty Company, the maker of the Beanie Infants, despatched us a Stop and Desist letter, so we referred to as it the Unique Bean Blanket Firm. That’s our authorized identify to this present day. We bought our first blanket in 1998 to a buddy we made in Boise, Idaho.
Bevoya: Up to now decade or so weighted blankets have change into extremely fashionable. As somebody who has watched the advertising cycle unfold, what has shocked you concerning the recognition of weighted blankets?
Keith: Truthfully, I used to be not shocked by their recognition. What did shock me was that it took so lengthy. Figuring out that we had a market throughout the autism and sensory processing dysfunction communities, we began advertising our weighted blankets to OTs in 1998. Round that point, I had utilized for a patent alone for the design of a weighted blanket, however it was denied. By the early 2000s, as OTs began to get the phrase out about weighted blankets, there have been a few mothers with particular wants children who additionally began making and promoting them. Slowly, over the subsequent decade, weighted blankets remained a cottage business, however there was rising consciousness. By round 2014, the mass media began catching on. We had been featured in Forbes, Cosmopolitan, Dr. Oz, Wall Avenue Journal, USA At the moment and others. It was round that point, I used to be capable of give up my common job and concentrate on the household enterprise. Then, in 2017, we had been interviewed by Time Journal for his or her 2017 invention of the yr award. After listening to about our journey from inventing a brand new product and changing into a pacesetter in a distinct segment neighborhood, we had been positive we might be featured. However alas, no. The award went to the Gravity Weighted Blanket which had damaged the document on Kickstarter for elevating probably the most cash for a begin up. By that point, we had been in enterprise for nearly 20 years. With the award, they acknowledged that Gravity didn’t invent the weighted blanket, however that they introduced it to the mass market. From 2017 on, weighted blankets exploded, as did our enterprise. However with that media consideration got here an outpouring of competitors, now acquiring their weighted blankets from China, like Gravity did, and the costs for weighted blankets dropped to a stage that has made it very arduous for a US producer like us to compete. So now, as an alternative of simply making an attempt to promote The Magic Weighted Blanket, I’m making an attempt to promote the one one that has been there all alongside, The Weighted Blanket Man.
