This week, on the Kids Sleep Show I welcome the Founder of Truuce bedding, to share all about this amazing and innovative Duvet bedding system, that my son, 10 and father, 75 both love equally for the simplicity in creating a clean and polished look in the bedroom, without the fuss.
Nancy Johnston and Kerry Roberts are the visionary founders of Truuce, a company that combines design, research, and innovation to revolutionize bedding.
In 2023, Kerry, tired of with wrestling with her duvet cover, called her dear friend and college roommate Nancy to create a more user-friendly design. As Nancy worked on a solution, she realized traditional sheets had their own set of problems. This sparked a flurry of prototypes aimed at making every aspect of bedding smarter. After several months of testing, redesigning and testing again, the integrated duvet and sheet system was ready for launch. They decided to call it Truuce, with a mission to help everyone make peace with their bedding.
Today, while functionality, architecture and design are at the heart of everything we do, we are equally cozy obsessed. This patent-pending design has reshaped duvets and sheets and has brought bedding into the 21st century.
- https://truuce.com
- https://www.instagram.com/truucebedding
- https://www.facebook.com/truucebedding
- https://www.tiktok.com/@truucebedding
- https://www.linkedin.com/in/nancy-johnston/
Episode Highlights:
- What inspired the idea behind Truuce, and how did your own sleep experiences or family life play a role in bringing it to life?
- Truuce bedding rethinks how we make a bed – can you walk us through the design and why it matters for busy parents or children learning independence?
- How does simplifying bedtime routines through smart design influence sleep quality for families, especially in those high-stress evening hours?
If a parent is looking to create a sleep-friendly bedroom but doesn’t know where to start, what small changes would you suggest – Truuce or otherwise?
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Welcome to the Kids Sleep Show podcast where we dive into the magical world of sleep and all things parenting. Join us as we embark on a journey filled with expert advice, practical tips, and heartwarming stories that will transform your little ones into sleep superheroes and empower you to navigate the beautiful chaos of parenting. I’m your host, Courtney Zents, and I’m on a mission to change how the world views sleep and provide accessible sleep coaching resources for all families to build healthy sleep habits in their home for children and adults of all ages.
As an award-winning speaker, author, and pediatric sleep expert, myself and my team of consultants work intimately with families around the world to teach healthy sleep habits to children and adults. I believe wholeheartedly that sleep is the foundation for which a happy home is built, so let’s sleep together. Hey everyone, welcome to this week’s episode of the Kids Sleep Show podcast.
I’m your host, Courtney Zents, and I’m joined today by the founder of an amazing company. I’m going to let her tell you all about it. Her name is Nancy Johnston.
Nancy, thank you for joining me on the Kids Sleep Show podcast. I have to say I’m so excited to talk all about Truce today, so let’s take a minute and introduce exactly who Truce is, who you are, and how you got started. Thank you so much for having me.
This is really exciting. My name is Nancy Johnston. I’m the founder and CEO of Truce.
We have developed the best bedding system and brought bedding into the 21st century. How we got started was a friend of mine, my college roommate and I, who’s a dear friend, she was really frustrated with sheets coming untucked and duvets, just super difficult to change and sheets stealing from her husband. So she said, can you make me something? And I’m a master seamstress.
So I said, sure, let me look at this. So as we got into it, I’m like, there’s got to be something on the market that, you know, has really kept sheets together and an easy duvet. And we really couldn’t find one solution that sort of solved all the problems with traditional bedding.
So we dove right in and we got started. She’s a marketing whiz and myself at the finance and sewing background. We spent about a year really diving into how people interact with their bedding, how they sleep in it, how they wash it, change it, and thinking about how people use their bedrooms and their beds these days.
It’s very, very different from, you know, 50 years ago where we would just go in our bed and go and sleep. Now we, you know, we kids play on their beds, we socialize, we binge watch movies all Saturday, we, you know, kind of rest and recuperate in our beds longer than we used to. So the bedding just really needed to come into the 21st century.
So we’ve developed a sheet and duvet system where we’ve kind of combined the duvet cover and the sheets into one super simple system. It’s intuitive, made it easy to put on. We’ve made it great to sleep in.
It stays in place but gives you complete freedom to move. And then we’ve made it really easy to make your bed so you can start your day off in a great way and have that bedding space all ready for you when you’re ready to retire the next night. So yeah, I will say I did get the sample that you shared so thank you for that and put it on our bed.
We have a king-size bed and I’m traditionally a very cold person and so I sleep with a heated blanket and I’m always very, very, very cold in my life. I have a space heater next to me right here in my office just because I like the room to be like 90 degrees at all times. My husband on the other hand is very, very cold, always likes to be a cold sleeper.
He’s got a fan blowing in his face which then by default hits me in the bed, you know. And so we’ve tried a variety of different things and I will say I put the sheets on and I put the whole system on and it is so simple because I don’t prefer a ton of covers. I have my heated blanket but it was not so hot and overwhelming for like year-round use.
Like now we put it on as I was joking with you between summer bed and winter bed as my husband calls it, right. So summer bed is really just like a very light quilt whereas winter bed is where we get the all-season comforter and put it on. But to your point like they get gross and duvet covers are nice because they can keep it one, it’s a color kind of aesthetic for the room but two, it protects the, you know, the down feather comforter that we use and it was so soft and the sheets they have this elastic on them that made them so easy to go on the bed which was really, you know, just simplicity in making it, you know.
I was telling my dad about it last weekend which we’ll talk about but it just is so nice that you can cleanly and easily wake up in the morning, your sheets are all still in place because they’re tucked under well enough especially in those deep pocket mattresses and then as somebody who loves sleep, you know, this is like the, this gets me excited, right. But then the ability to make it is simple. I’m somebody who wakes up every morning at five o’clock and I make my bed straight away as like the first part of my day where one, I feel accomplished and less cluttered, you know.
But two, it just looks nice, you know. So talk a little bit about like when you were designing it, right. I know there were very intentional things that you did in the zipper.
So talk about kind of how it works to keep your feet free and some of the elastic, like I said, was wonderful to like put the sheet on so the fitted sheet stayed but then there is no top level sheet as you traditionally think about it, right. It’s the bottom of the duvet. So kind of take a little bit to explain that to folks so they understand, you know, how you’ve set it up and why.
I know you mentioned a little bit but. Yeah, it was actually kind of exciting because every time I went to bed my mind would start to work and think about, you know, how traditional sheets are and they’re tucked in and so the first problem that we wanted to tackle was keeping that fitted sheet on the mattress and nice and snug. You can buy a deep sheet but then there’s nothing to pull it nice and tight and under the mattress and keep it on there.
So we’ve added like a five inch stretch band and rubber grip elastic so it really pulls that sheen fabric nice and tight. And then the second thing that we wanted to make sure is when you are putting the sheets on, we always play this like rotation game of the fitted sheet. Is this the end or is this the side and I’m not sure and so we wanted to make it really clear and easy.
So we have a what we call a navigation patch and that indicates the foot end of the sheet and it indicates the size. So when you’re putting it on you just find the patch and and there you go that’s the foot end. So you’re not flipping and rotating and I’ll shoot I got it on the wrong way.
Especially for king beds they’re almost but not quite as square so those are tricky. And then the flat sheet, first of all it always comes untucked and now with deeper mattresses and especially with adjustable beds those are tricky to keep tucked in all the time. So we wanted it to stay tucked but allow not to feel trapped.
So we’ve added a zipper at the foot that the flat sheet actually zips to the fitted sheet but you have complete freedom to move. I know I love to kick my feet out the side and at the end when I’m hot my husband at the end. So it will stay in place but it won’t wander and slip.
And then when we got to the duvet cover you know the duvet cover usually traditional duvet cover usually has a top and bottom and we thought well that’s an extra layer of fabric that we can really kind of get rid of. So why don’t we make the flat sheet do sort of double duty as your flat sheet but then also the bottom of your duvet cover. And then this allows us to just kind of layer things down and instead of stuffing the duvet insert into the cover.
So what you do is you lay the fit the flat sheet down you zip it to the fitted sheet so it’s anchored you just lay your duvet insert you can use your own insert whichever one you like. You like down if you like a down alternative it’s your choice you don’t even need an insert if you sleep really hot. You just lay that down on top of the flat sheet and then you lay your duvet cover or a duvet top on top of that and you zip it around the three sides.
We’ve extended the flat sheet so you can fold it over your duvet cover and snap it on the side so you have that nice clean crisp white sheet around your face and at the top so it just keeps everything beautiful and clean. So it’s just really a layer zip that’s it kind of process. It’s great for king beds especially because those are really difficult to get the duvet cover in.
And then one final thing I wanted to mention is the duvet insert that usually slides around a lot of times in the duvet cover. So we have straps in the corner with snaps they’re very simple you just loop them through your duvet insert snap it in and that will keep your duvet insert from sliding. So we’ve kind of really thought about everything and then when you do purchase this set you’re also included a bed sheet organizer which is just a strap a band that can go around your sheets that when you fold them all up it will indicate the size so when they’re in your linen closet you can clearly identify what’s your queen bed what’s your king bed sheets you’re not unfolding them all and you’re not shoot I got I got the wrong set.
So just little things like that that we’ve kind of walked through the whole process to make it simpler and easier and quicker so we can get on with our day because changing the sheets is is sometimes not our favorite thing to do. Yeah I love that and I will say the band I was like they should really just sell these bands at like different sizes because just last weekend you know I was doing my kids laundry and we have a queen bed a full bed a twin bed and then a trundle twin bed and I’m in there and I’m like okay are these fleece sheets for the the full were these queen you know and I’m sitting there and I pull all this crap out and then I was like oh it’s the wrong size you know because my brother stayed so I was changing the sheets in the guest room which is also a queen and I was like you know what I thought of you I was I really wish we had the band so I could just open the thing and go because I’m not somebody who can ever get the stuff back into right containers that they come in and I don’t really want them all sitting in the plastic you know so in our linen closet I mean it just looks like you know every once in a while it’s a bit of a dumpster in there uh you know trying to keep the sheets organized and I was like they should really just sell these bands but the bands are great as a secondary additive to the fact that the product’s lovely you know talk about the materials I’m somebody who is very uh passionate about purity in the bedroom and you know all of the off-gassing that can happen from mattresses there’s a lot of toxicity and sleep products that are you know being used around our room so talk a little bit about the the contents of the products that you’re making because I think it’s important for people to understand and a lot of people are more conscious these days of um you know of those different products absolutely yeah and we do sell the band separately so if you have traditional bedding that you’re still using you can always you know add that I didn’t realize that okay that’s yeah yeah which is exciting yeah yeah so that’s just a little help um yeah so um fabric was super important to me um so we wanted to find a manufacturing facility that um took this environmental concern very seriously and that we knew what kind of fibers and cotton and linens that we were getting so I’ve actually visited the factory and what we looked for was a long staple cotton which is super important if you think about braiding hair and you actually braid long hair it’s nice and smooth in the braid versus if you braid somebody who has short hair all the all the hair kind of sticks out of the braid um that’s the same with cotton so if you’re looking for a long staple cotton it will be nice and smooth when they weave it but if you look for a short staple cotton which is usually cheaper and less quality it’s gonna kind of fray and you’re it’s not gonna feel as smooth so we look for long staple cotton um and we have it in a sateen weave which is a smoother weave but it can be hot so we opted for a 300 thread count which gives us the perfect smoothness but then also breathability that we could find so it is a really beautiful cotton that is great for year round I think it’s a great weight um and it’s nice and smooth it washes wonderfully it’s a hundred percent we test all of our fabrics for chemicals um and they do not dye them with um azo dyes they’re safe dyes um for our duvet tops so all of our sheets come in 100 cotton and then our duvet tops are 100 cotton as well and we have one in a belgian flax linen which is kind of the champagnes of linen um the best quality linen you can get so you can mix and match your duvet tops with the same set of sheets you don’t need to buy a whole new set um if you want a linen for the summer which is a little more breathable and then switch to a cotton maybe in the winter time and then layer it with you know whatever kind of decor you like we’ve kind of have a base palette right now um but with um some more seasonal things soon so oh that’s awesome yeah I love it and I mean I think that purity is so important I didn’t realize ignorantly um until I got into the the sleep consulting world uh the 100 cotton versus like the blends and my mother-in-law was like schooling me on the fact that you know you have to buy 100 cotton and you know ideally organic cotton if you can but if you can’t like just 100 cotton because it washes better it wears better it’s safer and blah blah you know and she would start to go into all this around like the polyester blends and stuff and I um I didn’t realize you know until I became a little bit of a bougie sleeper because of my day job you know and um so that was 15 20 years ago and I know that you know things have come a long way but so has our access to information around you know the the quality and the purity and if you’re going to be spending your nights on something you want to make sure it’s clean and so I definitely love that now I will say target market wise right you can kind of go after everybody who sleeps because there is the need for everybody to to sleep well in a regulated environment for their body type right uh to your point you have adjustable beds you have traditional beds you have queen king you know full or doubles as I’m learning they call them over in UK um you know the double beds and the twin beds right so you sell sheets for all different sizes beds it doesn’t matter where I think you guys have such a cool market opportunity and I see it with the kids in our neighborhood or heading off to college right for the people that don’t want to make their beds in college and I will tell you you know it’s funny because I laugh with like my brother who’s a single uh you know single dad I’m like dude you got to make your bed like if anybody got in your you know into your bedroom and saw that it wasn’t made like that just looks so gross you know and again I blame the day job but then I was also laughing because I’m like this is such a great product for like heading off to college like here you go son or daughter make your bed every day and by the way it’s super simple and you’re gonna be gross because you’re in college you can clean your your sheets and your duvet and to your point you’re not trying to shove this massive duvet into the little washer and dryers in college so I think that yeah you know your product is great I was telling my dad about it this weekend for so many ages and stages of life that I know people don’t look at bedding the same way we probably do given the fact we’re in the space but it’s like if you’re sending a kid off to college it’s like here’s a complete set that will one allow your bed to be easily made to allow you to be comfortable three allow you to look kind of put together in the morning when you you know when you wake up but more importantly it’s comfortable and it’s luxurious on any different size bed given their situations you know I know college dorm rooms can be all set up and configured a little bit differently some are bunk beds some are individual twin beds you know I’ve even seen on tiktok lately that people are hiring interior decorators for dorm room I know I mean yes you you know like way to that market right um you know but even my dad he struggles he is 75 he has a queen-size bed at his apartment but he kind of struggles to like every time I come over him he’s like sleeping on the top of the bed just like sort of lazily I think because it’s hard he you know he has some trouble moving and I’m like dad like just pull it down and then you can you know go to sleep and it’s so much easier for the aging generation to you know to be able to make their bed kind of tightly because they really only have one blanket to pull up with truce versus the sheet and the duvet and the cover and the topper you know so I think you’ve got such a cool market there too for you know for making the bed which again is a simple task but I think something that helps people feel a bit accomplished as well yes yeah for sure um college beds especially because they’re a lot of those are raised so the kids have a hard time you know they get the fitted sheet on but then to tuck in that flat sheet it comes untucked and then the whole place is a disaster so so for sure it kind of stays anchored and then of course they’re on top of their beds just as much or more as they are in it so it’s it’s really important that they kind of wash the whole thing um with the washing is great because it can sit it can fit in one load um because we have three-quarter the amount of actual fabric that you need to wash if you have a duvet cover and sheets you’ve got both sides that duvet cover plus your sheets so it cuts down on the amount that’s actually washed and washes a little better and then for sure for those seniors um I had a 89 year old um beautiful lady tell me that this was a game changer for her because she couldn’t lift the mattress to tuck in the sheets and she had to wait for her grandson to come over and say hey can you come in and and you know that’s not what they want to have their grandkids do is come over and help them make the bed so she said this is made me independent again and I don’t have to tuck the sheets in I can pull it in and my husband is experiencing some dementia and he feels accomplished because he can actually start his day and make the bed with this system so yeah there’s so many so many great wins with this and for kids too they can’t tuck the mattress they can’t lift the mattress to tuck the the flat sheet in so they just pull it up and and it’s pretty much there and we’ll call that a win and we’ll move on with their day so yeah I love it this is great so I know people can find you uh but tell us a little bit about all the different places where Truce is located so they can have a look see some of your great videos and I’m going to be sharing when this goes live as well uh but we won’t spoil that because I have to um publish this episode before I put the content out but I always try to like to do it together but tell people where can they find Truce a bit more yeah so you can get it at um truce.com it’s t-r-u-u-c-e truce make peace with your bedding if you forget um what truce um that’s what it stands for let’s not fight with our bedding anymore and make peace with it so truce.com there’s product videos on there there’s information on there um we have a zip line you can always call seven days a week um if you have any questions or if you get the system and you have a quick question um we know that we don’t just change bedding Monday to Friday night at five so we’re all available seven days a week and we’d love to hear from you we sell it in a twin queen and king right now and we’re working on those uh split uh beds and the fulls and the california king so they’ll come out soon so um we’re just excited for people to try it and we got a really high repurchase rate so once people get they outfit their the rest of their house with truce because it’s just so easy so yeah we’re excited awesome i love thanks so much for coming on to the kids sleep show today nancy i’m excited to share all about truce and i know you guys are going to do great things there’s so much opportunity and they’re comfortable and they look nice and so it’s definitely a win uh in my book so i appreciate you coming on today thank you one more thing before you go don’t forget to subscribe leave a review or share this episode with someone you know who could use a little more sleep in their life for tips and resources be sure to visit us at tinytransitions.com or follow us across social media here’s to better sleep brighter days and healthier happier families.
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