I received my pillow. What do I do with it? It has no instructions.

by David Smith

Today we have an interesting question that came up this week that we felt was worthy of us coming together and sharing this expert knowledge. And that was, "Hey, I got my pillow and I don't have any instructions." 

NOTE: The pillow featured in this video is the Snuggle Soft 850 fill power, Ultra Premium Hungarian white goose down pillow, medium density (thickness), standard size.

So we'd like to go over “what does our box look like? What should I expect when I'm ordering a new down pillow?” (We're gonna focus on down pillows today). And then what are my best practices for after I get this new, amazing, yummy, scrunchy, awesome pillow?

We decided to move the entire company to being paperless. We did everything we could to remove as much paper inserts and stuff out of the box, and we've done a pretty good job of that. Sometimes there's an insert or two just as a reminder, but for the most part, most everything ships without paper. 

So the pillow just shows up, right? And sometimes we get the question: “What do I do with it?” 

We know that the spirit of the question is they know to sleep on it, but it's like, what? How do I re-fluff it? And so it's not necessarily coming compressed because we ship all of our pillows in their own box, but, yeah, sometimes the question comes up. What do I do once I have it? Once it's arrived in its box and I'm excited about it, what do I do?

Because if you buy clothes online, usually the first thing you typically do is try them on and then throw them in the washing machine after you’ve taken the tags off. 

Let’s emphasize, we're not in that kind of situation here.

Please don't wash your pillows.

Again, that was a please don't wash them.

Please don't wash them, no.

Please, please, please, please don't wash them.

Please don't wash them. 

In fact, the goal is to put it inside of a pillow protector. When we designed them, we designed them to be used with pillow protectors which you can find on the website. 

Pillow protectors have zippers, pillow cases do not, big difference. 

Anyway, with that question that came up earlier this week, which at first I was a little shocked by the question but I figured, if somebody asked it, there's no way that somebody else hasn't thought about it. They just didn't ask.

Would make some sense if we walked through getting the pillow, how the pillows come in their own boxes and how to get into them, and stuff like that?

Should I be concerned about using a knife or sharp instrument to get into the box? 

Great question. You might think that it might damage your brand new pillow. Let’s talk about how you actually open this box so that we're all clear.

Because we ship all of our pillows in their own boxes, we got to design the box with a lot of specificity about what we wanted it to look like and how we wanted it to be designed. Part of the design goal, was to make sure that a customer could not accidentally cut the pillow.

What about the bag it comes in?

We just never mention it but all of our ultra premium down pillows come with their own pillow bag. And this pillow bag is for traveling.

It's relatively durable, and when it's for storage and for travel, it should be pretty good. You could take it on the plane with you.

If you're a snow bird and you spend half your time in a cold state and the other half in Arizona, for example, you might need to package things up and store them away in closets.

We have a lot of customers also who have two down comforters, some of them will have a lightweight and then the year around, and then they'll store the year-round during the summer and then they'll use the lightweight. That's not terribly uncommon.They have very similar bags with containers and it's a wire frame bag.

What about the label and tag?

The law tag is required, and this tag declares what's inside. It’s the long tag that says it’s illegal to remove. It also declares the dimension and then it declares the density. And then it declares, it's got our information on it that shows that we manufacture it because we manufacture all of our finished goods. We have to provide that tag. You can remove the tag, but we recommend keeping it with important papers or taking a picture of it, just in case we need to reference it later. It’s sort of like the birth certificate of the pillow.

There’s a small label with our logo and our goose butt. Do not remove that. It ensures that we know where the pillow came from. If you were to request a pillow adjustment or a refurbishment, we wouldn’t be able to help you if that tag is missing. 

What do I do with it? Do I need to make the pillow thicker? 

Now that you have the pillow, what do you do with it? Well, it's obviously not gonna be terribly flat when you get it, it's relatively full already.

But if you want to, without question, you can puff it up, right?

And you can almost make it thicker than it was before.

You're also going to add the pillow protector to it and the pillow case, and then you're going to put it on your bed.

That said, some people ask how thick the pillow is, as in terms of measurement of actual inches as opposed to what we refer to as medium thickness.

It's a tough question to answer when someone says, "How thick is the pillow?" They might be a side sleeper and they're trying to figure out how to fill that area between the crown of their shoulder and the side of their head.

However, the answer is never going to be accurate answer because you may fluff it thicker and then you may compress it more, and after your head is actually on it, it's going to change

Another FAQ: I ordered more than one pillow - Where are the others?

We ship every pillow in its own individual box. Therefore, if you order four pillows, you're getting four boxes.

It is not uncommon for FedEx to deliver three boxes with the fourth one not showing up until the next day. So sometimes it takes 24 hours to deliver an entire order.

Moreover, sometimes the pillow protector may be in the box, and other times it may be shipped separately, depending on the order.

What you learned today:

In this episode of Pillow Talk, you learned:

✔️ How to open your box. 

✔️ What you find inside the box. 

✔️ The key features of the pillow, including the branded sash, the law tag (can you remove it or is that illegal?), the travel bag with handles. 

✔️ How to answer the "thickness" question. 

In conclusion, you should feel confident now that when you receive your pillow, you’ll know exactly what to do with it.