West Elm is delving deeper into the wellness category with a collaboration with weighted blanket brand Bearaby.
The direct-to-consumer brand's Napper style is launching in two fabrics and eight colors on westelm.com and in five West Elm doors beginning Wednesday, Oct. 30, in time for the holiday season.
Weighted blankets are filled with materials that make the blanket feel heavy and are said to promote sleep and have anxiety-reducing benefits. They have become especially popular with the Instagram wellness set, and brands like Gravity and Bearaby sell them for upward of $250. Bearaby's offering is more design-forward than most on the market, which tend to look like standard comforters. Bearaby's blankets have a hand-knit look and are made with velvet and sustainable Tencel yarn.
For Williams-Sonoma-owned West Elm, the collab is another step into the wellness category. The retailer this year also launched a proprietary bath and body line called Water Street, which carries soaps and lotions.
Bearaby's Napper blanket at West Elm comes colors familiar to the retailer's muted jewel tone and pastel aesthetic, including a sun yellow and dusty blush for the velvet blanket and frost gray for the Tencel. They are priced from $249 to $279, depending on weight, which ranges from 15 to 25 pounds.
"We look to identify emerging brands doing stylish and innovative products that our customers find compelling," said a spokesperson for the company. "Bearaby is incredible quality and they share our commitment to sustainability — it's all natural fibers, there's no plastic, it's biodegradable."
Kathrin Hamm launched Bearaby in December 2018, after working for the World Bank, traveling a lot and developing problems sleeping. She founded Bearaby because she couldn't find a weighted blanket brand she felt was both functional, breathable, sustainable and aesthetically pleasing. It turns out stylish blankets aren't easy to make. Hamm found a manufacturer in Germany who developed a proprietary machine for Bearaby to produce the blankets' weighted yarn. She initially raised $250,000 on Kickstarter as a seed round, and now says the brand sells about 2,000 blankets a month. West Elm is the brand's first retailer.
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