The Thomas Edison of Bedding - The New Yorker

Los Angeles is lousy with pitches—unsolicited ideas proffered in elevators, at buffet spreads, while waiting for the barista to brew a chagaccino. In recent years, friends of Lee Eisenberg, an Emmy-nominated writer (“The Office”) and creator (“Jury Duty”), had been worn down by his spiels on his latest project—a new kind of duvet cover. No more wrestling unruly comforters into floppy, restrictive sleeves with elusive corners, Eisenberg promised. Heads nodded, but eyes rolled, too. “Everyone acknowledged there was a problem,” he recalled recently. “I don’t know that anyone acknowledged I was the person to fix it.”

Eisenberg has now sold hundreds of told-you-so’s, at almost two hundred bucks a pop. While traditional duvet covers open on one side, requiring a bed-maker to awkwardly slide a comforter through a single entry slot, Eisenberg’s Nuvet unzips on three sides. He likens the situation with traditional duvet-cover design to “having two pieces of bread and trying to smush the meat in, or the tomatoes.” He pressed his palms together horizontally to illustrate. “That’s a really stupid way of making a sandwich.” The Nuvet, he said, is open-faced.

The burgeoning bedding magnate was seated at his Studio City desk at another new job, producing a yet-to-be-announced Apple TV series. He has a mostly silver beard and wore an olive polo shirt. Behind him, multicolor pushpins dotted a naked corkboard. Part of his scattershot Nuvet pitch approach, he explained, had been to tell enough people about the idea that he would feel obligated to follow through. “I also felt like if I talked to enough people someone would eventually say, ‘Oh, you should talk to my cousin, they own Bed Bath & Beyond,’” he said. Close: One eventually connected him with Anum Teli, an entrepreneur whose family runs a textile factory in Pakistan, where the Nuvet is now made.

Eisenberg learned that a woman had patented a similar design; he paid fifteen thousand dollars to buy her out. (She had initially asked for six figures. “At which point I said no,” Eisenberg said, “and ‘How important is the patent?’”) He and Teli began collaborating over Zoom as he learned about subjects like zipper-makers (YKK is the industry acme), flanges (little overhangs that hide said zipper), and cotton variations (they opted for Supima, a long-fibre luxury type). Soon, to the surprise of many in Hollywood, there were prototypes for friends and family to test. “I felt like, if I have the fix for something, I can will it to be,” Eisenberg said. “That’s so much of what producing is in Hollywood.” Previously skeptical associates were won over. “There was kind of a delighted glee,” he said. “Like if your dentist started a hot-dog stand, you’d be, like, Oh, that’s surprising.”

The pursuit was not totally ex nihilo. Eisenberg’s father, an Israeli immigrant, was an upstart children’s clothier in the Boston suburb of Needham. In high school, the younger Eisenberg belonged to an entrepreneurship club that ran a business printing companies’ logos on pens and mugs; revenues reached fourteen thousand dollars. (He was the top salesperson.) “The Notes app on my phone is filled with ‘Shark Tank’ ideas,” he said. Friends sometimes suggest he focus on writing. “If I don’t have fifteen plates spinning at once, I get antsy,” he said.

Others lent this particular plate crucial support. Christie Smith, a Hollywood manager friend, suggested the Nuvet’s portmanteau moniker. (“The new way to duvet!”) Eisenberg’s wife, the journalist Emily Jane Fox, devised the tagline: “Less struggle, more snuggle.” (He calls her Nuvet’s “shadow C.O.O.”) Famous pals and collaborators—Brie Larson, Mindy Kaling, Rainn Wilson—pitched in with free promo on social media.

“Hold on,” Eisenberg said. His phone had dinged—an alert from Shopify, the sales platform he uses. “I just got a sale!” he announced. A king-size white Nuvet had been ordered in the Tampa area. “It’s nice to see the fruits of your labor,” he said.

A demonstration was arranged via Zoom. At his house in Los Feliz, Eisenberg showed off a navy model (the Nuvet also comes in sea-foam green), spread across his bed. The corners were turned up to reveal a white comforter placed neatly inside. He prepared, with detectable pride, to zip it shut. “It’s hard to do with one hand,” he conceded, and put the phone down. Twenty seconds later, the Nuvet was closed—struggle-free and snuggle-ready. How long had it been taking him to put on traditional duvet covers? “Like four, five minutes,” he said. Hopefully, he explained, the Nuvet will become as synonymous with a big cotton sack as Kleenex is with tissues. He showed off one of his favorite features: a pair of internal tags reading “Feet Go Here,” to help users properly orient their bedding. “I wanted to make it as dummy-proof as possible,” he said. “Basically meaning, for me.”♦

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