Sandi Hendry needed a blanket. In 2009, her daughter, Shannon Miller, was two months into a five-month-long hospital stay, and she wanted a blanket to comfort her when family and friends couldn’t visit. It was all she asked for.
An unsatisfying scavenger hunt around the Salt Lake Valley ensued. Hendry found many fleece blankets. She saw a lot of decorative throws and quilts. All were either too scratchy or useless for burrowing in. She needed something soft, cozy and classy.
When she couldn’t find what she wanted, she called on Jenna Houston to help her custom-make the perfect blanket. In particular, Hendry enjoyed a new microfiber fabric called minky, which was as soft as it was stretchy.
The 100 percent polyester fabric was still new to the market, and Hendry often used it to make gifted baby blankets. However, her daughter’s blanket needed to be much larger. She picked a baby pink fabric for one side and a paisley floral pattern for the other, bound together with silk.
For Miller, the gift gave comfort in an uncomfortable situation, but more than that, it was a way for her mom to always be with her.
“When you’re in a crisis, the first person you want with you is your mom,” Miller says. “Because she couldn’t be with me, having her blanket near meant the world. It gave me the love and support I needed.”
Everyone needs a blanket
A curious phenomenon took place almost immediately. When Hendry visited her daughter again, she noticed others wrapped in the blanket she and Houston had designed and sewn together. It was as popular as it was well-used. She learned that Miller often lent it out to other patients needing comfort.
“I thought to myself, ‘I need to go home and have several more sewn and provide blankets for everybody,’” Hendry says, and again she tapped Houston to assist, an early partnership that continues today.
Starting with 250 yards of minky fabric and her trusted PFAFF sewing machine, Houston made another 50 blankets for hospital patients. Hendry gave the blankets away to doctors, nurses, staff and patients. The blankets endeared recipients and word spread.
“People started calling me on the phone, asking me, ‘Are you the Blanket Lady?’” Hendry says, which would inevitably lead to a placed order.
Again, more blankets were sewn, only she upped the total to 200 this time. Again, Houston provided assistance but called in recruits, and a handful more seamstresses were hired for the project.
Quickly, Hendry became more than a mother responding to a daughter’s request. She was fielding the requests of many more in need of comfort. Seeing firsthand how much her blankets benefited others propelled her forward.
“From the beginning, my goal was to blanket the world with love, coziness, comfort and healing,” Hendry says. “A blanket can be the beginning of that.”
Hendry kept ordering fabric and taking orders, even delivering the minky fabric blankets — often nicknamed Minkys — by herself. She folded and piled them into the back of her car and met people in parking lots for delivery. Despite all the precautions she took, meeting with people she didn’t otherwise know was deemed too dangerous, and a new path was taken.
“My husband’s client saw me getting into my trunk and handing over a package, and called my husband asking, ‘What’s your wife doing transferring goods in parking lots?’” Hendry recalls. “What I was doing was too dangerous. I needed to have a store.”
In October 2010, the first Minky Couture store opened in Layton.
A blanket balance
With Christmas not far off, the company made a healthy guess of how much product would sell, and the several hundred Minky Couture blankets lining their shelves when business began seemed like more than enough. But by the end of the first week, only a single blanket remained.
Hendry quickly threw out a new number and goal: Could Houston and her crew of five seamstresses manage to create another 200 over the weekend? It was like that a lot, often coming down to selling more than they could make, an ongoing tug-of-war between supply and demand.
“In those days, I was cautious about how much we would need to make. I didn’t want to overextend or assume I would be bigger than I could keep up with,” Hendry says. “Instead, I thought, ‘I don’t want to jinx this. It’s going so well.’”
“Do I feel like I’m done growing? No. Do I feel like I’m happy with where it is? Yes. I’m delighted. But I’ve got to keep going. I’ve got to blanket the world.”
— Sandi Hendry
The team managed to complete the request and continued to take on orders for additional blankets as they came, even if it meant they had a hard time keeping up at first. As the company has grown, it’s transcended that one-time problem: today, Minky Couture sells an average of 80,000 blankets every month.
Success in a second career
Prior to starting Minky Couture, Hendry built a career working as a fifth and sixth grade teacher. For 30 years, she impressed upon students universal lessons like always being on time and always doing your own work. She learned to read body language and got a feel for what battles to fight and when to do so. These lessons and experiences uniquely prepared Hendry to survive her early years of business.
“I’ve been blessed to teach and loved it. But when I [started this company], I felt something change,” Hendry says. “What I’m doing now is what I created. From the very first blanket, it was mine, as well as every step along the way. There’s something about ownership that makes you want it to succeed. I thought, ‘If I take baby steps, it will.’”
Nearly all of Minky Couture’s blankets are sewn remotely by local women. Seamstresses show up two or three times a week at the company’s Ogden headquarters, grab new bins of material and return home to make what’s been ordered.
Houston, the company’s first seamstress, is now the production manager, overseeing a crew of 50 employees who are key to blanket creation. She grew the production team early on in the company’s history when an order for 500 blankets came in. The blankets had to be made in a month.
“It was crazy and super stressful. I was a stay-at-home mom. I’d do little jobs here and there, but [making that many blankets] was like jumping into the deep end of the pool,” Houston says. “People love that we still have that aspect about our company, that we give moms jobs. They can stay home, raise their kids and still earn an income.”
Always giving back
Minky Couture got its start by giving blankets away. After 15 years of business, that essence remains through The Heart of Minky program and other charitable pursuits. The Heart of Minky program donates over 60,000 mini blankets to NICUs across the country, ensuring some small sense of comfort in the first few weeks and months of those babies’ lives.
When Hurricane Helene landed in Asheville, North Carolina, in 2024 — causing an estimated $53 billion in damages and accounting for 108 deaths in the state — the company heard from one woman who worked in the local post office. She called a week after the storm hit, needing to cancel her blanket order. She’d lost her home in the hurricane.
Hendry had a different idea.
“I said, ‘Are you kidding?’ I sent her and others in the town 500 blankets, and they were thrilled [by the gesture] as they were displaced and staying in churches nearby. When a disaster like that happens, opportunities to give increase. New doors open.”
And Hendry is doing what she can to keep them propped open. As national exposure grows for the brand, she’s back to how she felt when the company first started, hoping she doesn’t run out of blankets.
“Do I feel like I’m done growing? No. Do I feel like I’m happy with where it is? Yes. I’m delighted,” Hendry says. “But I’ve got to keep going. I’ve got to blanket the world.”