Brandon-based products are Oscar bound

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This article was published 24/02/2023 (1052 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

A local entrepreneur’s silk pillowcases are being included in the 2023 Everyone Wins gift bags, which are given out every year to the actors and filmmakers who are up for major accolades at the Academy Awards.

This means that Oscar nominees like Cate Blanchett (“Tár”), Angela Bassett (“Black Panther: Wakanda Forever”), Colin Farrell (“The Banshees of Inisherin”), Steven Spielberg (“The Fabelmans”) and Brendan Fraser (“The Whale”) will all be receiving Blush Silks products ahead of the big ceremony, which is scheduled to take place March 12.

While Christine Steele has known that her pillowcases would be shipped out to Hollywood for months now, she told the Sun it’s still hard to believe these products will be getting this kind of international spotlight, considering she has only been running this side business since February 2021.

“It’s pretty overwhelming,” Steele said over the phone from her Brandon residence Thursday. “I didn’t expect to be where I am right now two years ago.”

Steele originally got Blush Silks off the ground alongside her friend Leanne Wrobel, with the pair aiming to provide Canadians with access to high-quality silk pillowcases and scrunchies at an affordable price.

While kick-starting a new business one year into the COVID-19 pandemic wasn’t ideal, Steele said that they managed to weather the storm by incrementally emerging into the marketplace.

“We had great customers and we started off slow,” she said. “We started off with three pillowcase colours in queen size, so by doing that we really didn’t ramp up until stores reopened.”

Blush Silks’ official website proclaims that each pillowcase is 100 per cent Pure Mulberry Silk, which is purchased from an overseas manufacturer that supplies companies like Disney with the same product.

Outside of the soft, luxurious feel, Steele insists that silk pillowcases offer a superior sleeping experience over their cotton counterparts, since silk is better at regulating temperature, repelling dust mites and keeping skin hydrated.

“When I got into this, I wanted to make sure this was the best [product] you could possibly get,” she said. “And in two years, we haven’t had a single issue and the feedback has been just phenomenal.”

This past fall, Steele reached out to Los Angeles-based marketing company Distinctive Assets to try to take her business to the next level, knowing this group was responsible for putting together the famous Everyone Wins nominee gift bags.

For the last two decades, the contents of these gift bags have been subjected to much media scrutiny, with last year’s items including Byroe skincare products, a bottle of Chianti Classico and an all-inclusive trip to Scotland’s Turin Castle worth $50,000.

While the contents of this year’s gift bags haven’t been revealed in their entirety yet, Steele received word back in November that boxes of her Blush Silks pillowcases will be sent out to the 27 Oscar nominees who are nominated in the ceremony’s five major categories — Best Actor, Best Actress, Best Supporting Actor, Best Supporting Actress and Best Director.

Not wanting to waste this marketing opportunity, Steele also went out of her way to personalize these gift boxes by including a handwritten note congratulating each recipient on their success.

“Celebrity placement is nearly impossible for small companies like ours to obtain, so this is a dream come true having our brand associated with such a highly recognizable event,” Steele said in a Wednesday news release.

Moving forward, Steele hopes all the media exposure brought about by the Everyone Wins campaign boosts her profile and puts Blush Silks products in more brick-and-mortar retail locations.

Blush Silks pillowcases and scrunchies are mostly available for in-store purchases in Manitoba, with national and international shipping also being available through the company’s official website.

“So it would be neat to grow it that way, because when people see it in person it’s very different than online shopping,” she said.

Despite her recent success, Steele told the Sun she isn’t ready to give up her regular nine-to-five job in favour of Blush Silks, even if tackling this side project requires her to sacrifice evenings, weekends and the simple pleasure of sleeping in on a work day.

“It’s not bad, because I’m an early riser,” she said. “So when my son and my husband are still sleeping in the morning I work on it for two and a half hours.”

Otherwise, Steele hopes that her upcoming media exposure encourages other Westman entrepreneurs to remain persistent and stick with their passion, since their own big break could be right around the corner.

“You just have to go for it, because otherwise you’ll always wonder what would have happened,” she said.

“And I always feel if it doesn’t work it doesn’t work. At least I know I tried.”

» kdarbyson@brandonsun.com

» Twitter: @KyleDarbyson