TOWSON, Md. — A local mom says she’s tired of fighting with her bed sheets. So, she’s come up with a new line of bedding called Truuce that she says ends the nighttime fight between you and your bedding, and it’s getting a lot of attention.
“It sure is a pain point for a lot of people,” says Nancy Johnston of Reisterstown, founder of Truuce. “This is a universal problem people have with their bedding, their bed sheets [and] their bed partners, fighting over the duvet, fighting over the top sheet – sheet stealers.”
On February 27, the company launched its Kickstarter campaign and on the first day, Kickstarter recognized Truuce as a Project We Love and in its Discover Spotlight on Women Creators series, “which was a great honor to us,” Johnston says.
A wife and mother of two, Johnston, like most moms, says she’s the main person who does the laundry and makes the beds in her house. She is an accountant and master seamstress who has her own sewing business. When the pandemic hit, her sewing business slowed down.
Then she was chatting with another mom, who gave her a challenge.
“A friend of mine approached me and said, ‘I’m fighting with my bedding. Can you just maybe fix our sheets? They keep coming undone and it’s frustrating,’” Johnston says. “So, I said, that’s brilliant, yes. That’s a problem everybody has, especially with duvet covers and changing, and the top sheet debate is always contentious.”
Johnston put her sewing skills to work on a solution. She tore up her own sheets to make patterns and used other fabrics to try various ways to make sheets and duvets work together.
In five simple steps, Truuce’s bedding zips and snaps together to become one piece. Johnston says the sheets stay on and tucked in, with room to kick your leg out the side for ventilation.
Truuce also features fitted sheets with a wide stretch band at the corners, that has extra grip on the ends. A navigation panel is sewn at the bottom of the fitted and flat sheets, so you know you’re putting them on the bed in the right direction.
“How we use our bedrooms today is very different than what we did way back when Bertha Berman invented the fitted sheet in 1959,” Johnston says. “We’re grateful for her invention but I think now it’s time we upgrade to the 21st century.”
Johnston expects the first orders to be delivered in summer. They’re offering a specialduring the Kickstarter campaign, which ends March 27.
The Ontario, Canada native says she is glad she started her business in Maryland. Her family moved here in 2015 when her husband, an accountant at McCormick, was transferred here.
“All of the support that I’ve gotten has all been from Maryland,” she says. “It’s such an amazing state for opening a business.”
She’s gotten support from the state’s Small Business Development Center and Maryland Innovation Center, and locally from the Towson Chamber of Commerce and the Towson StartUp.
Johnston, who grew up on a farm and learned how to sew as a child from her grandmother, now has a patent pending for her product. She has some advice for other people with a business idea.
“I just say go for it, because you fail a hundred percent of the chances you don’t take. So, you just have to keep trying. Get a lot of feedback from different people to make your product the best it can be and keep working at it.”
