Two friends from middle school, a French linen range and a change of name.

SIJO is an American bedding brand that sells online, directly to its customers. The company writes its name in capitals on its own website and was founded by Anni Stromfeld and Jacob Xi. Its current About page introduces the pair under the line “Anni and Jacob needed a nap,” and says that, exhausted by the corporate grind, they set out to find work that improved everyday living. The brand, the page says, is named for a form of poetry.

The brand did not begin under that name. A capture of the website in the Internet Archive from 11 January 2019 greets visitors with the line “Welcome to Sijo, formerly Olive Wren,” and the same page still promotes Olive Wren French linen alongside the new name. Its footer carries copyright lines for both 2018 and 2019. At that point the shop sold more than bedding: the menu listed French linen bedding, a bamboo undershirt for men, bamboo loungewear for women and a line of scented candles under the banner “Sijo Scents.”

The About page archived in July 2019 gives the founders’ backgrounds in more detail. It says Stromfeld started the company with the vision of a global home brand that inspires mindful living, that she earned an MBA at the University of California, Berkeley’s Haas School of Business, and that she had worked as an investment banker and a strategy consultant for technology companies. Xi, the page says, had previously founded Scopearound, a smart camera company, and began his career as a marketing consultant to technology companies. The page adds that the two had known each other since middle school. An undated profile on the One Kings Lane blog describes the same backgrounds, Stromfeld in banking and Xi in technology and marketing.

The 2019 page set out the brand’s philosophy in two words, “Mindful + Modern,” and said the company wanted to create timeless home essentials for the modern home that customers would love for decades.

Partner factories, linen from Normandy and a range built around four fabrics.

The 2019 About page described SIJO’s supply chain in general terms: the company said it partnered with factories that produce for international luxury bedding brands, and that each piece was made with carefully sourced materials and attention to detail. The same page explained the direct-to-consumer model in plain language. By cutting out wholesalers and distributors, and avoiding costs such as licensing and slotting fees, the company said it could pass savings on to customers, and it called this vertical integration.

The clearest sourcing statement today concerns linen. Product descriptions for SIJO’s linen sheets, pillowcases, shams and duvet covers say the fabric is French linen sourced in small batches from Normandy, which the company describes as a region known for linen. French linen bedding was also the range the brand sold under the Olive Wren name in its January 2019 shop.

The product range has since narrowed to the bedroom. The website in October 2026 organises the shop into sheet sets, duvet covers, comforters, pillows and mattress pads, with a smaller loungewear section of tops, bottoms and dresses. Instead of naming products after places or people, SIJO names its fabrics. The current site offers four: AiryWeight Eucalyptus, a lyocell made from eucalyptus; LuxeWeave Linen; LuxeSoft Cotton; and ButteryDrape Bamboo. A comparison section invites shoppers to pick the fabric that suits them, setting out the texture of each, from the subtle lustre of the eucalyptus to the lived-in texture of the linen.

The pillows and comforters follow the same naming pattern, pairing a descriptive compound word with a material. The shop lists a FluffBase eucalyptus pillow, a CloudSupport latex pillow and an AiryWeight eucalyptus comforter, alongside newer lines such as the AeroChill comforter, which the company describes as a blend of TENCEL lyocell and other fibres. Bundles let customers combine pieces into a set.

Design and documentation.

Direct-to-consumer bedding brands sell sheets, duvets, pillows and towels mainly through their own websites rather than through department stores, and they usually build their identity there: in the name, the photography, the colour names given to each shade and the tone of the copy. Many are young companies, and some have since been sold, merged into larger groups, moved into physical stores or closed, so the brand a shopper sees today may sit with a different owner from the one that launched it.

Bedding is also a category where the place of making is easy to blur. A brand can be designed in one country while its fabric is woven, finished and sewn in others, and the wording on a website does not always say which step happened where. That makes the plain questions worth asking: who started the brand, who owns it now, and which mills or factories make its products.

Each guide separates what independent, dated sources record from what the company says about itself — its founding story, its owners over time and where its textiles are made — and marks plainly what rests only on the company’s own word.

A poetic name, compound product words and a giving programme.

SIJO’s identity rests on contrast between its name and its product language. The brand name is short and literary, taken from a form of poetry, while the products carry long, descriptive compound names such as AiryWeight, LuxeWeave, ButteryDrape and CloudSupport. The About page sums up the brand under three headings, “Unparalleled comfort,” “Timeless aesthetic” and “Inventive materials,” and describes the company’s aim as creating sensorially superior sleep products, built on the belief that comfort can be engineered.

Giving has been part of the brand story from early on. In 2019 the About page said the company donated a percentage of its sales to the Joyful Heart Foundation, which the page said helps survivors of sexual assault and domestic violence to heal. The current site describes a different arrangement: it says a share of every SIJO purchase is donated to a nonprofit chosen by the customer, and it presents the community’s giving as a section of the About page.

The website’s tone is light. The About page opens with a nap, the footer promises content that is “anything but snooze-worthy,” and the site now includes a chat assistant called Isla, presented as a sleep advisor that helps shoppers match fabrics to the way they like their bed to feel. The January 2019 home page, by contrast, carried an “As seen in” carousel of press quotes and a prompt to share photos on Instagram.

For a design guide, SIJO shows how a small bedding brand can pair a brief, literary name with a system of descriptive fabric names. Compare Boll & Branch, the sheet brand, and ettitude, another direct-to-consumer bedding brand. For this guide we use dusk blue, flax, linen white and night ink with a sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

Keep Sijo’s identity on hand — save it to a board in the Made Good inspiration library.