We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Jonathan Kunke a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Jonathan, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today Are you happier as a business owner? Do you sometimes think about what it would be like to just have a regular job?

This is a deceptively tough question! The honest answer is that I am happier as a business owner in the ways that matter the most. I think it is really difficult to truly understand what it takes to own your own business until you actually do. The phrase “blood, sweat and tears” comes to mind – it really is intense! In the beginning it fully consumes you, and as a result, I think that to some extent your day-to-day happiness can become predicated on the success of your business in that given moment. Every entrepreneur will tell you that in order to succeed, you have to be prepared to put in the work, to put in the time, and to make sacrifices in order to see your vision come to life. That has definitely been the case in my journey – there have been extended periods of time when I was working 18-20 hour days, 7 days a week, and during those times you can feel the stress and strain that you are putting on your body (the irony is not lost on me that to succeed in our sleep company we had to forgo a lot of sleep!). You give up your social life and your financial security, and, hardest of all, you miss out on time with your family. The flipside of this, however, is an experience that is deeply fulfilling, profoundly rewarding, and wholly unique. I personally consider myself to be sort of an “accidental entrepreneur”, in that I would have never imagined 10 years ago that I would own my own business today. But everything that led to the creation of Honeydew happened so naturally for us, that I have absolutely no doubt that this is exactly what I am supposed to be doing with my life. Being able to see your ideas go from sketches to real, tangible products – and then knowing that those products are helping thousands of people around the world every year live with less pain and get a better night’s sleep – is truly beyond words. Before the pandemic, this was still just a side project that I was doing a couple of days a week with my wife and my dad. Now, we have a team of people making pillows every day, and we just set up additional machinery that will allow us to triple our current capacity. We are expanding our work with charities and nonprofit organizations, and in every possible way, our lives are fuller and more rewarding than ever before. So, do I sometimes think about what it would be like to just have a regular job? Sure, there are times that I think about it. But I never actually consider it, because even though I may have found my way here unexpectedly, it wasn’t truly an accident. And when you know that you are exactly where you are meant to be, doing exactly what you are meant to be doing with your life, there is no better feeling in the world.

Jonathan, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

When I was 4 years old, my father opened his first brick and mortar mattress store. He had been working in the sleep industry for a decade before founding The Sleep Shoppe, and over 35 years later he still owns and operates it to this day. My siblings and I grew up in the stores, spending time there as kids on weekends, and eventually helping out part time. After I graduated from college in 2005, I started working alongside my dad full time, and after Evita and I got married in 2013, she joined us in the business as well. By this time The Sleep Shoppe had grown to be the market leader in our county, with several beautiful stores carrying over 150 different mattresses and 50+ pillows. I have neck and shoulder issues, and despite all the technological advancements in the mattress industry, pillows were one area that never seemed to evolve. I had access to literally every type of pillow on the market, but I was still couldn’t find one that helped. I had spent a lot of time studying the science of sleep and ergonomics, and as a result I felt like I knew what I needed, it just didn’t exist.
Evita and I are crafty people by nature, and we thought we could do better. So after making some preliminary sketches, we got our hands on some fabrics and fill materials and started experimenting. In the beginning neither of us knew how to sew, and in those early days it was actually Evita’s mother, Lidia, sewing all of our pillows by hand on her dining room table. This quickly turned from a crafting project into a hobby, and eventually became an obsession. We made countless prototypes, and tried dozens, maybe hundreds of different fill combinations. At this point we were just trying to make the perfect pillow for ourselves and had no intention of ever starting a business or selling them. As a result, we had no deadlines or budget constraints to limit us. We just kept making sample, after sample, after sample – and did this literally for years. When we finally felt like we had created our perfect pillow, we were immensely proud of it. We made some as gifts for friends and family and were blown away by the feedback we received. As a result, we started selling small batches of our “scrumptious” pillows in our brick-and-mortar stores, and before we knew it we had customers telling us that our pillow had changed their life. Hearing that, we knew that this was bigger than us, so we founded Honeydew Sleep, and built our own factory here in our hometown where we still make every one of our pillows today.
I am incredibly proud of what we have built since then. We have won awards from Good Housekeeping, Popsugar, and Architectural Digest. We have been featured in Vice, Buzzfeed, Allure, Marie Claire, LA Weekly and many more. We are regularly chosen as the top pillow on “Best Pillow” lists, and our pillows have become incredibly popular gifts as well. Forbes even calls our Scrumptious Pillow “The best pillow for side and back sleepers”!
I know as someone with neck issues, there is nothing more valuable to me than waking up pain free. When we started this, I was sick of every morning being a battle. I was stiff and sore from the moment I woke up, and never actually felt refreshed in the morning. At the time I was only in my early thirties, but my body felt ten years older. I didn’t care how much it cost or how long it took, I was determined to make a pillow that actually addressed my pain and improved my sleep so that I woke up refreshed and full of energy. I think that one of the reasons our pillows and our story really resonate with people is because it is so relatable – 30-50% of adults live with neck pain. Approximately 50-85% do not experience complete resolution of symptoms, and some may go on to experience chronic, impairing pain. Our customers are just like me – they have tried a ton of pillows that were all claiming to cure their pain, but none of them actually worked. When they get our pillow, they are surprised to find that it not only brings them relief, but it is also the most luxurious pillow they have ever felt. For many people this is an eye-opening experience because they didn’t believe that it was possible for them to live without pain.
When we founded Honeydew, we did so because we care about people, we believe in the power of sleep, and we know we can make lives better. To stay true to this mission, we made a vow from the start that no matter what happened, we would never compromise the quality of our products. A lot of brands make claims like this, but the truth is that this is not how our economy really works. Almost every product in the world has some compromises. On some level that is just part of running a business – changes need to be made to reduce costs, or streamline the manufacturing process, or help with marketing. I understand why this is often necessary, but it was important to me that Honeydew would be different. Again, we didn’t initially go into this thinking we would start a business, but the response we were getting from our customers was so powerful we felt like it was important. I knew that they were reacting to the quality and innovation of our pillow, and if we were going to make this life decision to change careers and start making pillows full time, we owed it to our customers to make sure that they could rely on us to make the best pillows in the world. That philosophy has helped guide us as a company, and now we like to say that we will never release a great product – because great is not enough. Every product that Honeydew makes has to be truly special. Because of this, we are now in a place where our customers get excited every time we release a new product, which is an amazing feeling. I am incredibly proud of our products and the difference that they are making for people. Every day we have customers reach out to us, sharing their stories and thanking us for helping them wake up pain free, and it is incredibly gratifying to know that we had a part in that.

What else should we know about how you took your side hustle and scaled it up into what it is today?

I am an intensely curious person. As a result, I tend to have many interests, hobbies, and creative endeavors. I get excited about things easily, and when something genuinely sparks an interest in me, I can’t help but to fully immerse myself in it. I crave stimulation, and because of this I have always loved to learn, explore, solve puzzles, and find creative solutions to overcome challenges. When we had the idea of making our own pillow, it immediately set off all of these things in my brain, and I quickly became obsessed. I would find myself daydreaming of different fill combinations and wondering what would happen if I tweaked the ratio of materials or changed the stretch amount of our fabric.
This ended up being something that took years to perfect, but once we did, I knew we had something special. Almost immediately after we started selling our pillows, we couldn’t keep them in stock. However, we had not designed this to be a business, and as exciting as it was to hear how much people loved them, I was not in a position financially where I could quit my job and focus on making pillows full time. In addition, I had a love and appreciation for my industry and my job, especially because I was working with my dad at the stores, which meant so much to me. My time and energy were definitely needed there, so I continued to work my normal schedule at the stores, and relegated my pillow making to the back burner, only taking a day or two a week to refocus my energy there. I was actually content doing this, because I was able to keep making pillows and experimenting in my free time and hearing the incredible feedback from our customers made me feel like I was making a difference in their lives, which was ultimately my goal from the start. But then, the pandemic happened, and it changed everything.
Prior to the pandemic, if I wasn’t working or making pillows, I was always on the go. So when quarantine came, I suddenly found myself in this strange, quiet lifestyle that was a complete 180 from my typical existence. When the lock downs went into effect, we were forced to close our stores temporarily, and I used my newfound free time to focus on Honeydew. We had the products and the passion, but having this extra time allowed me to learn how to run this business, find the tools we needed to function smoothly, and identify the steps we would need to take if we wanted to grow. Being able to devote myself to Honeydew full time made me fall deeper in love with it and helped me realize how much I had been wanting to grow this dream of ours. As I expanded my knowledge, and become more confident in my abilities, I could now see the potential of where we could take our business and the impact we could have if we did so.
During this time, I discovered that running Honeydew was a better fit for my skill set and personality. I felt myself fall into my own groove and begin to thrive. I was also able to really refine our purpose and develop a mission we were proud to be driven by. Eventually when our brick-and-mortar stores re-opened their doors, I chose not to walk through them. I was fully committed to my new business, my new life, and my deeper purpose.
Those were the early days, and although it has only been 3 years since the pandemic and our decision to commit ourselves to Honeydew full time, we have already come a long way. There have been many milestones that marked our way, but in some cases the most memorable were the small moments where we felt seen, recognized, understood, and appreciated for our work.
First, it was the letters that we received directly from our customers that brought tears to our eyes. We heard from disabled veterans, and retired police officers who were wounded on the job. We had people telling us that they had regained mobility in their neck that they thought was gone forever. All the messages like these along the way confirmed that we had to keep pursuing this because people needed us and were beginning to rely on our pillows. Doctors and other medical practitioners started to reach out to us to tell us that they were recommending our products to their patients. Then, all of the sudden, major media outlets started to notice and praise our products as well. Reading every review continued to push us to get ourselves and our products out there. Each publication, each “best of” list that our products appeared in, each award that we won, especially the Travel Award for Good Housekeeping Magazine, gave us new burst of confidence and energy.
We had never anticipated that our initial little idea would lead us to the growth and fulfillment we had achieved. When trying to figure out what the next logical step would be, we took a leap and sent our pillows to our dream retailer, a company that we have revered and respected for decades. We knew it would be a long shot, but after testing them out, we got the news: Not only would they be bringing them into their stores, but they were incredibly impressed and excited to do so. They welcomed us with open arms, and their support and encouragement has made us feel more like family members than business partners. Traveling around to their stores and meeting their sales team has been incredible. Seeing so many experts in the sleep industry who believe in our products light up when they talk about how much their sleep has improved since switching to our pillows has truly shown us that we are on the right path and has reaffirmed that what we are doing is important. To date, this has been our biggest milestone by far.

How’d you build such a strong reputation within your market?

I believe that our reputation is built on three main things. First, our unwavering dedication to uncompromised quality, regardless of any obstacles. Second, our passion for constant innovation, and our mission to improve our customers’ quality of life. Finally, our deeply personal involvement, accessibility, and communication with our customers.
My journey has been deeply personal, and driven by passion, born out of a lifetime of experience in an industry more crucial to our health than most people are even aware of. The more I learned, observed, researched, and explored this industry and the science of sleep, the more I became aware of the profound effect that sleep has on every aspect of our wellbeing. I also came to understand what a crucial role the support and comfort of our sleep system (the bed and pillow that we slept on every night) played in the quality of our sleep. Searching for the
right balance became fascinating to me, and I truly found my purpose in pursuing it.
From the very first moment I began to contemplate making an improvement to even my own
quality of sleep, and that of my loved ones, this pillow project came to life. From its conception, and still to this day, I have always been invested in having my hands in every part of the process. This has meant designing, experimenting, prototyping, building, sewing, filling pillows, educating customers, having quality face to face meetings, and helping people find their way to the perfect support for their individual needs. When our business started to blossom, I personally answered every phone call, email, and text from customers. As we grew and began to include new relationships with retailers, I stayed committed to this personal touch. I wanted everyone who sold our pillow to own one so they could experience the magic of this unique product we had created firsthand. We gifted our pillows to our sales teams knowing that their own experience would help them to communicate the benefits of our products from a personal standpoint. I didn’t want people to just sell our pillow, I wanted them to believe in it, to love it, and to recognize what makes it special. As a company, we also make sure to travel around and meet every sales associate so that we can personally share our story and our purpose. We want them to know that they can reach out to us personally at any given moment and that we will be there to support them. We have grown our relationships with retail management and their sales teams by visiting every site where our pillow is sold, and spending time getting to know the people who are representing us to their customers. These relationships, and the precious feedback we have gotten, have absolutely helped us grow, helped improve our products, and helped build our reputation as a company who cares.
It was equally important for me that our product not only lived up to, but also exceeded expectations. I knew that the only way this would be possible was if we never wavered in our commitment to the absolute best quality components and craftsmanship. This is why we built our own factory and brought almost all of our processes in house. From the start we set very high standards for ourselves, and we knew that we needed to be present in the process to see them through. This allowed us to build trust within our customer base, and our retailers. They always know that they can count on us to consistently deliver the very best. For me, this journey did not begin on the path of building a business, but rather in the pursuit of improving the lives of others through an industry that I knew and loved. As I began to see the difference that I could make just by providing people with the knowledge and products that could improve their quality of sleep, I became even more dedicated to that mission. I believe that it is this purpose and drive that give our business heart, and in my opinion, there is nothing I would rather build our reputation on than that. We could not be more grateful that those we work with have been able to see our love for what we do, and we believe that has been the key to the growth and success we have been so fortunate to achieve thus far.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://honeydewsleep.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/honeydewsleep/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/honeydewsleep
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/honeydew-sleep/
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/HoneydewSleep
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/honeydewsleep
• Other: TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@honeydew.sleep