Two Wharton classmates, a New York flat and a gap between boutiques and chain stores.

Snowe is a New York home-essentials brand founded by Rachel Cohen and Andrés Modak, who met as MBA students at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. Wharton Magazine, in a short profile in its Spring 2016 issue, said the two came up with the idea after moving to New York City together after graduation. Setting up a home, they found that essentials tended to be either very expensive boutique goods or mid-quality products from brand-name chains, and they set out to fill the space between.

The business launched as a direct-to-consumer website in June 2015, according to the same profile. Cool Hunting covered the launch on 26 June 2015, describing Cohen and Modak as co-chief executives and Snowe as a homewares line sold directly online. Its piece said the founders had been frustrated, while furnishing their own apartment, by stores that were either poorly designed or out of reach on price, and that Snowe deliberately offered a limited range — one well-made option per item rather than many — running from the dining room to the bathroom. The examples it gave were porcelain bowls, crystal tumblers and percale sheets.

The founders’ partnership is part of the brand story. Wharton Magazine returned to them in its Fall/Winter 2019 issue in a feature on married graduates who work together. It said Cohen oversaw finance, business development and retail, while Modak led marketing, creative and technology, with each managing separate teams, and that they described themselves as strategically aligned on the company’s vision even when they disagreed. Business of Home, in August 2018, also identified Modak as co-founder and co-chief executive.

The brand remains in business. In October 2026 its website, snowehome.com, was trading under the line “Home essentials for whatever life brings,” with its range arranged into four sections: Sleep, Bathe, Eat and Decor.

Family-owned mills in Italy and Portugal at launch, and a wider factory list today.

Where the products are made has been part of Snowe’s pitch since launch. Cool Hunting reported in June 2015 that the company worked with family-owned manufacturers in Italy and Portugal and developed its designs together with them, though it did not say which product came from which country. Wharton Magazine, in 2016, described the suppliers as European and American. Business of Home reported in August 2018 on a new oversized throw, designed for use both indoors and out as part of a collaboration with the website Apartment Therapy, and described it as made in Portugal.

The company’s current wording is broader. Its Our Story page says Snowe works with European, American and Indian factories, and it singles out Italian-crafted sheets as an example of what that sourcing produces. The same page explains the price logic in the familiar direct-to-consumer terms: by partnering directly with factories and selling directly to customers, the company says, it can offer its products for less than other premium retailers. Domino reported the same approach in March 2017, saying Snowe works directly with factories to cut out markups.

The bedding range today is organised by material. The site’s navigation lists sheets in percale, sateen and linen, alongside a fabric it calls Softexture, and comforters in down and down alternative. Towels come in two weaves, classic and honeycomb, and the tabletop side spans stainless-steel flatware, porcelain dinnerware and serveware in materials including resin, marble and wood. Colour names on the percale sheets include Essential White, Classic Ivory, Ash Grey and Slate Blue.

The company has also sold in person. Domino reported on 17 March 2017 that Snowe had opened The Whitespace, its first shoppable space, in Manhattan’s Flatiron district. The article said the space doubled as the company’s headquarters and was connected to the founders’ home, and that it showed Snowe products alongside goods from other design brands. Wharton Magazine said in 2019 that Snowe then had shops in New York City and the Hamptons.

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.

Short verbs for sections, a set of house principles and a one-word name.

Snowe’s identity is built on economy. The shop is divided into four one-word sections — Sleep, Bathe, Eat and Decor — and each comes with a short run of descriptive words rather than a long product story. The website’s footer and legal line set the name in capitals as SNOWE with a trademark symbol, while the running copy uses Snowe in upper and lower case. Wharton Magazine reported in 2019 that the name was meant to suggest a clean, classic aesthetic.

The Our Story page lays out the brand’s outlook in a series of house principles. It opens with a picture of everyday life — a dinner party one night, cereal on the sofa the next — and says the company wants exceptional quality and thoughtful design to be attainable through all of it. The principles that follow are short imperatives: keep it simple, always have a purpose, be there always and forever, balance tradition with your own thing, and be real above all. The page argues that the best products are worth more when used every day rather than saved for special occasions. The site also runs an editorial section called The Magazine, with buying guides on comforters, towel fabrics and throws.

The same restraint shows in the early retail work. Domino described The Whitespace in 2017 as a modular space designed by the founders with input from friends and colleagues, and said its style drew on mid-century motifs, minimalism and American, Scandinavian and Japanese design. The space offered registry appointments as well as shopping, and the current site still runs a gift registry.

For a design guide, Snowe shows how a direct-to-consumer brand can make one name, four short section titles and a handful of plainly stated principles carry an entire home store, from sheets to flatware. Compare Parachute, the Los Angeles home brand, and Brooklinen, the Brooklyn sheet brand. For this guide we use slate blue, ash grey, porcelain and ink with a sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

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