I Tried the Company Attempting to ‘Disrupt’ the Throw Pillow Space

Throw pillows are something you don’t think about until you desperately need them, and then you find yourself in a spiral, swiping through pages and pages on a website you don’t even know how you ended up on. At least, that’s where I was recently when I realized I would need several to fill out the back of a daybed I was having built to accommodate a full-sized mattress (did you know those are basically impossible to find too?). The company I had bought the beloved throw pillows for my couch from years ago seemed to only sell to stores, and was also maybe out of business. Where to begin?

So when our Shop Editor passed along the information that there was a new company FLOOF (yes, you read that name right) that wanted to do what all startups want to do and "disrupt" the industry of throw pillows, my interest was piqued. A few quick emails and I was being set up to test the fully fluffed FLOOF experience.

Some background: despite the limited information on their website, FLOOF isn’t a brand coming out of nowhere with a bunch of venture capital and not much else. It was started by Peter Sivas, a member of the family behind D.V. Kap Home, which has sold pillows out of California via a number of brands you may be familiar with for two decades. But this time, they’ll be doing as is the rage and selling directly to consumers, a more contemporary approach for an older brand, and likely an attempt to reach a different kind of audience. FLOOF also claims to simplify the issue with buying today—too many options—by offering a "concierge" service where a suggested selection of pillows are presented to you as a deck so you don’t have to guess which will look good together. Or, you can shop their "pillowscape" sets. "The goal is to make the consumer feel like a designer," Sivas recently told Furniture Today.

I’m usually fairly good at knowing what I want aesthetically—even if it takes me a while to get there—but I was interested to see what someone else would tell me. So I started by sending over a message to the chat on the FLOOF site asking them to recommend "some throw pillows for a daybed in a range in the blue family." When I was asked for more details on the daybed, I explained that it would be basic plywood, with sheets/blankets in blue tie-dye. I added that I was looking for four to six pillows in a range of sizes but all in the same rough color palette, one that wasn’t heavy on patterns. (I had asked a friend to hand-dye a fitted sheet to make this bed feel like more of a couch, along with matching pillowcases.) Less than a day later—you can step away from the computer, and they’ll email you back their responses—this is what they sent back:

Honestly, I was impressed—I didn’t want to go with the patterns, but they picked several pillows I had been considering anyway, and if you’re more open-minded and less particular than me, I could see the way they presented things as helping you lay out a space. (I’m not sure how sustainable the service is depending on how large they want to scale, but that’s a them problem.) At first glance, the offerings on the site are a bit glitzy, and occasionally lean hotel lobby, but some of that is likely due to them all being presented together; some of the "pillowscape" sets in particular, like "Mad Maximalist," seen above, are clearly targeting a younger demo in terms of shapes and bright colors. After digging around, I went for two Fancy Pants in Baltic, and two Furever in Navy in 14 x 24 (to use as long resting pillows for my unique setup), plus accent pillows of the Luna in Midnight, and the Shuba Ball my FLOOF concierge suggested in Cloud. All were filled with ethically sourced feather down, though FLOOF also offers something they call "vegan angel hair," which is just polyester.

Soon after, I received three large boxes in the mail. Each pillow had been packaged in a reusable silky bag (good if you plan to put your pillows away at some point), along with a pamphlet that had specific instructions on how to properly fluff them (karate chops are involved). The quality was certainly there—these are not cheapo pillows, though you get what you pay for (had I paid for these myself, they would have run me several hundred dollars). But given that I was seeking to solve a particularly unique design conundrum, I was pleasantly surprised by how lush everything felt. So often, fabrics can look cheap online, and it’s stressful to buy something you can’t feel. It was a relief to get these.