business owner fights wrinkles in sleep

By Brooke Stevenson    
A local business owner has designed a pillow to help prevent wrinkles on people’s faces while they sleep at night.
Susan Schottin, owner of Galerie Affordable Picture Framing on Chapman, recently patented “Pillow V” to prevent wrinkles while sleeping.
“When you wake up some times you have those little sleep wrinkles scrunched on your face,” Schottin said. “Then those little sleep wrinkles don’t go away as you get older.
“I started thinking there has to be a way to sleep comfortably on a pillow without it ever touching your delicate face.”
It took Schottin about two weeks to come up with the idea of a pillow that would support her head, but would never touch or press her cheek, chin, jaw and front of her neck.
She came up with a v-shaped idea, sketched the design and made her prototype out of bubble wrap.
“I thought that (the pillow) would be kind of neat to market,” she said. “Then I thought that this was so simple that anyone could knock me off.”
Schottin then researched several design patents, met with a patent lawyer and put in an application with the United States Patent and Trademark Office about a year and a half ago.
In May she received the design patent for the “Pillow V” and began to sell them.
    “You lie down and sleep on it like a v,” she said, “not with it going around your neck like a travel pillow does, it flips the other way.
“So the bottom line is that you can sleep all night and never have the pillow touch your face. Whether you sleep on your back, side or stomach, the pillow will never touch your face.”
She added that the wrinkle crease she had on her face when she began the project is now gone after sleeping on the pillow for two years. The wrinkles went away fast and they never came back.
“I have been selling the pillows mostly by word of mouth and haven’t really advertised yet,” Schottin said. “I have sold out of my store, on eBay.com, Etsy.com, and out of the back of my car.
“In the last couple months, without advertising, I have sold about $1,800 in pillows.”
A professional seamstress in Sevierville makes the 100 percent cotton pillow covers and pillows filled with hypoallergenic fiberfil.
“It is far more comfortable than sleeping on a regular pillow because when it is in that v-shape it feels like two loving hands cradling your head,” Schottin said.
To learn more about the “Pillow V” go to the Web site at PillowV.com.