How a cold dorm room and a pair of scissors became Slanket

Gary Clegg was cold.

He was a freshman at the University of Maine. His dorm room was freezing, Conan was on TV, and the remote didn't work through the sleeping bag he'd wrapped himself in. So he did what any reasonable person would do. He got scissors and cut a hole for his arm.

One sleeve, then two

It worked, sort of. He told one person: his mom. She took the idea home and sewed the first real Slanket in 1998: a blanket, with sleeves. Gary used it through the rest of college. (It has since retired. We're told it lived a full life.)

From a dorm room to a business

A few years later Gary moved to Boulder to live with his brother, Jeff. They started testing the idea with friends, then strangers, then a factory. Production started in late 2005. When the website went live, a friend posted it online, gamers found it, and the first run sold out.

Then everything happened at once

In 2006 we brought Slanket to the housewares show in Chicago. The Today Show filmed the booth and aired it nationwide. The next morning, buyers were calling. QVC followed, and one appearance sold 17,000 Slankets in 11 minutes. Late-night TV started making jokes. 30 Rock mentioned us. A Harvard Business School case study used us as an example.

And then, like every good idea, the copies showed up.

Still here, still the people who made it

That was a long time ago. Since then we've sold more than 1.7 million Slankets around the world, through QVC, our own site, and stores in the UK, Europe and Japan. We still run it ourselves, out of Denver. We still use the same idea: a blanket big enough to cover you from shoulders to toes, with sleeves, so you can actually use your hands.

One customer, Jacob, bought his Slanket in 2006 and has used it every day since. That's the standard we try to keep.

If you've been cold for no reason, it's not too late. Find your Slanket.