This holiday season marks 20 years of Fluf.
It’s a moment I’m excited to share – but also one that gave me pause. Each time I sat down to write about it, I realized there wasn’t a single clear place to begin. There were too many stories, too many versions of the journey, too many moments that felt essential.
So I’ll start at the beginning.
It was a chilly evening on Toronto’s Queen West in late 2005. My co-founder, Terra, and I were frantically pinning heavy card stock price tags onto the freshly-stuffed pillows lining a long brick wall. Arranged by color, one editor described it as a journey into ‘Sultan’s palace’. Guests were imminently arriving for our opening night party and – in my recollection – we were still working through our basic pricing strategy (what’s the margin? markup? that price seems too high. but that’s the price it needs to be. and on.).
You’d think we’d be ready but, in hindsight, our timeline was either masterful or insane, depending on your perspective. We didn’t want to burn cash on retail rent, so after finding our space way faster than expected, we moved like beasts to get things on the shelves and open the doors. In roughly two months, we signed a lease, sourced fabrics, found local sewers, stitched piles of pillows, stuffed and priced said pillows (on opening night) and … opened for business.
Terra and I had both had a ‘retail fantasy’, which, when we really broke it down, was less hard-driving flagship, and more Sesame Street: sweeping the front stoop, welcoming friends and neighbors with a warm beverage, gentle tunes in the background.
There were elements of all that, for sure – and also lots of rapid-fire learnings. And when the recession of 2008 hit, the writing was all over the (long, brick) wall.
We shut down the store, took out a closet-sized space overlooking the railway tracks, signed up for trade shows, and started slowly, methodically building the business of Fluf today. That was 17 years ago.
Twenty years is a lot of years.
Everything you’d expect happens in 20 years: successes and failures, highs and lows, friendships, growth, loss, moments of genius and moments of stupidity. Funny times, hard times, disbelief, boredom, joy. Collaborations and ownership changes. Easy days, frustrating days.
And lots of things you wouldn’t expect: a trade show booth going up in flames, a trip to small-town Texas to salvage a giant custom order, standing up to a big box store (with exactly the outcome you’d expect …), dopey office mice, roosters that said ‘moo’.
There’s the products, our values, the things we’d do differently, the insights we’d share with a business just starting out.
You see the problem. There’s just too much. The stories are literally endless.
But whatever story we tell, there’s one thing it will always come back to: through it all, there was you.
You are at the heart of everything we do. The simple truth is that, without you, we wouldn’t be here. It’s you, your ongoing support, your deliberate choice to buy from small businesses, buy local, your reviews (I read every one), your votes of confidence, your kind notes of appreciation and encouragement, your feedback on how we can do better – it’s all of that that keeps us in business, year after year.
Twenty years makes me feel so many things: humbled, proud, old. But most of all, I feel immense gratitude.
Thank you so much for being here.
❤️ Nathalie
Founder + Director
