My Pillow
My Pillow, Inc. is a pillow manufacturing company based in Chaska, Minnesota, United States. The company was founded in 2009 by Mike Lindell, who invented and patented MyPillow, an open-cell, poly-foam pillow design. From 2004–2009, MyPillows were sold through Lindell’s Night Moves Minnesota, LLC and have been sold through My Pillow, Inc. since 2009. My Pillow has sold over 41 million pillows, due mostly to TV infomercials. The company started with five employees in 2004 and had 1,500 employees as of 2017.
My Pillow, Inc. has been fined, and has settled various lawsuits related to misleading advertising. The company has made scientifically-unsupported claims that the company’s pillows could treat and cure multiple diseases, including multiple sclerosis and cerebral palsy.
History
Origin
My Pillow was founded by Minnesota native Michael J. Lindell. To help fund the development of the pillow, Lindell sold four bars he owned in Carver County, Minnesota, and mortgaged his house. At first, Lindell hand-sewed the pillows himself and handled all the sales and distribution with help from his family.The first MyPillow was sold in 2005 at a kiosk in Eden Prairie Center, a mall in Eden Prairie, Minnesota. For the next six years, the company struggled, selling at mall kiosks, state fairs, and trade shows.
Promotion
The company's success took off after launching an infomercial in October 2011. The thirty-minute show was shot in one day in front of a live studio audience and cost $500,000 to produce and launch. As of September 2013, the infomercial was still running an average of 200 times per day on local and national networks. Since it first aired, My Pillow has sold more than 30 million pillows and grown from 50 employees to over 1,500.In July 2015, Lindell and My Pillow sponsored an attempt to set a new Guinness World Record for the world's largest pillow fight at a St. Paul Saints baseball game. The fight featured 6,261 participants, beating a previous record of 4,201.
In May 2018, Lindell and My Pillow again broke the Guinness World Record for the world's largest pillow fight, this time at the evangelistic PULSE Movement event held at the U.S. Bank Stadium, after Lindell led over 45,000 people in prayer.
In late March 2018, student activists from the Stoneman Douglas High School shooting, including David Hogg, called for a boycott of advertisers on the television show The Ingraham Angle on Fox News Channel, after host Laura Ingraham made disparaging comments about Hogg. Dozens of advertisers subsequently vowed to no longer pay for advertising on The Ingraham Angle, but My Pillow continued to advertise on the show and increased their advertising buy on The Ingraham Angle by 625% during the first week in April 2018.
MyPillow spent more money advertising on the Fox News Tucker Carlson Tonight program than any other advertiser as of June 2020, after many major companies stopped supporting the show. A data firm estimated that nearly 38% of Carlson's 2020 advertising revenue had come from MyPillow at half-year.
Operations
The company's headquarters, call center and customer service center are located in Chaska, Minnesota. My Pillow manufactures pillows, mattresses, mattress toppers and covers, Giza Cotton sheets, and pet beds at its 70,000 square-foot manufacturing plant in Shakopee, producing approximately 25,000 pillows per day. Some products are marketed as "proudly American made".Retail
My Pillow opened its first retail store in Burnsville, Minnesota, in 2012 and, as of 2017, had grown to 17 locations in Minnesota, Iowa, North Dakota, South Dakota, and Nebraska. My Pillow products are also offered on QVC, at major retailers, trade shows, and from the My Pillow website.Covid-19 pandemic production shift
In March 2020, FOX News reported that founder Mike Lindell had announced that 75% of the company's production was shifting to making cotton face masks to donate to health care workers for use during the COVID-19 pandemic, and that "Masks will not be available to public to purchase", though the cotton masks later appeared for sale on the My Pillow website.Design and technology
My Pillow products are a patented design, involving a mix of different-sized pieces of open-cell poly-foam. Lindell claims to have tested 94 different foams before deciding on the right one. The pieces are chopped to specification by a machine Lindell developed based on a piece of farm equipment. The mix also contains a resin that enables the foam to retain much of its shape when molded to the user's preference. The pillows are non-allergenic, dust mite-resistant, washable, and dryable. In 2013, QVC awarded My Pillow its Q-Star Award for Product Concept of the Year.Lawsuits and settlement
In April 2016, a class action lawsuit was proposed for the pillows being falsely advertised, among the complaints being that Lindell is marketed as a "Sleep Expert," despite having no board certification or special training in sleep medicine. The Better Business Bureau received 220 complaints regarding the company from 2013–2016.In August 2016, the New York State Attorney General's office charged that My Pillow failed to collect and remit over $500,000 in sales tax. The company denied any wrongdoing and agreed to pay $1.1 million in settlement.
On November 1, 2016, My Pillow agreed to pay $1 million to settle a false advertising lawsuit brought in Alameda County Superior Court by Alameda County and eight other California counties. The lawsuit challenged the company's marketing claims, which asserted without proof that its pillows could treat symptoms of fibromyalgia, restless leg syndrome, sleep apnea, cerebral palsy, acid reflux, and other conditions. As part of the settlement, the company was banned "from making claims in California that its pillows can cure or treat diseases and their symptoms without a human trial to back up the statements." "In addition, My Pillow must stop promoting itself as the 'official pillow' of the National Sleep Foundation because it failed to disclose its financial connection with the foundation to consumers."
In November 2017, the lawsuit, which challenged the appropriateness of the marketing, packaging, and sale of MyPillow products, including health claims about the product, buy one get one promotions, and the use of third party endorsements and logos, was settled.
Ratings and reviews
In January 2017, the Better Business Bureau announced it had revoked the accreditation for My Pillow and had lowered their rating from an A+ to an F based upon numerous consumer complaints. The main issue addressed by the BBB was the constant use of their buy one, get one free offer. The BBB's Code of Advertising requires that offers or discounts must be made for a limited time, or the deal becomes the normal price of the product. It remained an active promotion, as of July 2020.A 2016 Consumer Reports review of the company's pillows found a mixed reception after at-home testing, finding that "only one-third of the group said they would buy MyPillow again."