Where Did Weighted Blankets Come From, Anyway?
Keith Zivalich with Pugsly, the Beanie Baby that led him to his “aha” moment in 1997.
Bevoya: Can you tell us about your background -- where did you grow up? where do you live now? What do you do for a living? And a little about your own mental health journey, if you have a journey to share?
Keith: I grew up in Los Angeles. Now I live with my family in Valencia, CA, a suburb outside of LA. Since, 2015, my primary source of income is through running a small family e-commerce business making and selling The Magic Weighted Blanket. I don’t really have much of a mental health journey other than recently self-diagnosing myself as a highly sensitive person, which is not a disorder but more of a personality trait. Not sure it had anything to do with me inventing the weighted blanket, but I do know I instantly felt a calming sensation the first time my daughter placed her Beanie Baby on my shoulder, which was the inspiration for the weighted blanket.
Bevoya: How did you start exploring weighted blankets? What was happening in the world at that time and what led to your insights?
An early prototype of the “bean blanket.”
Keith: In 1997, our family had just moved back home from Boise, Idaho where I was working for an ad agency. One day, my daughter placed a Beanie Baby on my shoulder and I noticed how it hugged me. My first thought was to imagine a blanket filled with these little beans. It would be “the blanket that hugs you back,” which is now our registered trademark. I asked my wife to make a child size prototype to show around to our neighbors with kids. No one liked it. It was too heavy. I remembered a friend of ours who is a special needs teacher telling me that she used to hug the kids with autism and sensory processing disorder in her class to calm them down. I gave her the prototype to try out. She came back the next day saying she needed more. From that moment on, I knew weighted blankets were going to be huge. I found a manufacturer here in Los Angeles and started making them. We called our new business The Original Beanie Blanket Company but Ty Corporation, the maker of the Beanie Babies, sent us a Cease and Desist letter, so we called it the Original Bean Blanket Company. That’s our legal name to this day. We sold our first blanket in 1998 to a friend we made in Boise, Idaho.
Bevoya: In the past decade or so weighted blankets have become incredibly popular. As someone who has watched the marketing cycle unfold, what has surprised you about the popularity of weighted blankets?
Keith: Honestly, I was not surprised by their popularity. What did surprise me was that it took so long. Knowing that we had a market within the autism and sensory processing disorder communities, we started marketing our weighted blankets to OTs in 1998. Around that time, I had applied for a patent on my own for the design of a weighted blanket, but it was denied. By the early 2000s, as OTs started to get the word out about weighted blankets, there were a couple of moms with special needs kids who also started making and selling them. Slowly, over the next decade, weighted blankets remained a cottage industry, but there was growing awareness. By around 2014, the mass media started catching on. We were featured in Forbes, Cosmopolitan, Dr. Oz, Wall Street Journal, USA Today and others. It was around that time, I was able to quit my regular job and focus on the family business. Then, in 2017, we were interviewed by Time Magazine for their 2017 invention of the year award. After hearing about our journey from inventing a new product and becoming a leader in a niche community, we were sure we would be featured. But alas, no. The award went to the Gravity Weighted Blanket which had broken the record on Kickstarter for raising the most money for a start up. By that time, we had been in business for almost 20 years. With the award, they acknowledged that Gravity did not invent the weighted blanket, but that they brought it to the mass market. From 2017 on, weighted blankets exploded, as did our business. But with that media attention came an outpouring of competition, now obtaining their weighted blankets from China, like Gravity did, and the prices for weighted blankets dropped to a level that has made it very hard for a US manufacturer like us to compete. So now, instead of just trying to sell The Magic Weighted Blanket, I am trying to sell the one person who has been there all along, The Weighted Blanket Guy.
Keith: It wasn't like one day I woke up and thought, "Hey, I should be the weighted blanket guy." It has been something people have been calling me for many, many years. From day one, when we started a niche company and all the way through the explosion of weighted blanket's popularity, I have always answered customer phone calls and emails, and when I introduce myself, I very often heard people say with shocked surprise, "You're the weighted blanket guy." And one of the things about being a small family business, you pretty much have to do it all, and that includes building your brand. I've spent 26 years building the Magic Blanket brand and thought it was time to put myself out there as the guy who started the weighted blanket phenomenon. And although I don't like him, it has worked wonders for The Pillow Guy. The goal is not to necessarily promote my brand, but to promote me, my story and the knowledge I have gained by being consumed with all things weighted blankets so I can help bring a little calm and comfort into people's lives.
Bevoya: What do you wish more people knew about weighted blankets? What do you think companies get wrong when they try to sell them?
Keith: I wish people knew that weighted blankets have been bringing calm and comfort to people for a long time and that it is not because of the media hype. That media hype has turned weighted blankets into a get rich quick scheme by many start ups. They buy cheaply made and priced blankets from outside the US, make a lot of money, sell the company and look for the next media darling. In the meantime, we have loyal customers who have found a holistic remedy to their anxiety and sleeplessness and then tell their friends and we eke out an existence. Weighted blankets work. There is science behind it with a long legacy of helping people. That is the story the media giants should be telling. So the Weighted Blanket Guy is telling it.
What these companies get wrong based on customer feedback is that these companies are selling one size for both men and women – a 48x72. Most of the factories in China mass produce these as a standard size. There are two drawbacks to this size. 1) 48 inches is often too wide for most women. It spreads the weight out too much so the person is actually under less of the compressive weight, which is where the magic happens. 2) 72 inches is too short for most men. All blankets have a tendency to pull up. A 72 inch blanket is going to pull up over a taller person’s feet.
Keith with his family in the early years
Bevoya: Do you have a favorite type of weighted blanket? What should consumers look out for when trying to choose one?
Keith: I have been sleeping with same Charcoal Grey Chenille 20 pound blanket for going on 10 years. Chenille is our most popular because it is super soft and durable. There are several things consumers should look for:
Get the blanket to fit the body, not the bed. I get calls all the time from people asking for a queen or king size blanket. A blanket that large weighs over 30 pounds and needs to be taken to a Laundromat with industrial size machines.
A removable duvet cover is a bad choice. You have to unzip the cover. Untie the inner liner. Machine was and dry the cover. Hand wash and hang dry the inner liner. Re-tie. Then re-zip. I get many calls from consumers who have learned this the hard way and now want something that can go right in the washer, right in the dryer and then right on the bed.
Is there a warranty that guarantees quality? Because most of the weighted blankets on the market today are made cheaply overseas, there is little or no assurance of quality. We have a lifetime warranty and I can count on one hand the number of blankets that have been returned faulty to us.
All weighted blankets retain some degree of body heat. When weighted blankets exploded on the market in 2017, one of the biggest complaints from the general market was that they were hot. So manufacturers started coming up with alternative covers that were “cooler.” Yes, they will be “cooler” for one simple reason, they are more breathable. Cotton and cotton flannel are “cooler” fabrics because they are more breathable. Heat can more easily pass through than a chenille or minky or fleece. But many manufacturers want prospective customers to think that they will be cool under one of these blankets. But the truth is a weighted blanket presses down on the body and traps body heat. It is going to be 98 degrees. With cotton or another type of cooling fabric it will technically be cooler but most people will not feel a great amount of difference. I always tell people to give their bodies a couple of weeks to get used to the blanket, including used to the added heat.
Paying a little more for our professionally American made weighted blanket is worth it. Our blankets last a long time.
Bevoya: Is there anything else I've neglected to ask you that you want to share?
Photo of the Charcoal Grey Chenille ($ 171.00)
Keith: No, I think this covers a lot. But I do hope the one takeaway will be that after the mass media hype about weighted blanket fades, the fact that weighted blankets have been bringing calm and comfort for over 26 years means they aren’t just another fad, like the Snuggie. Remember those? When I first came up with the weighted blanket idea, there was a similar product called the Slanket. It was a blanket with sleeves invented by a college kid and his mom made the first prototype. He and I both started our businesses around the same time, 1998. Then years later, a competitor came out with the Snuggie and it exploded on the market. But is was a gimmick and a fad, and Snuggies aren’t really around anymore. My hope is that weighted blankets bring calm and comfort to everyone for many more years to come.
