The story behind COTI

There's a private half of a woman's day. The few quiet minutes she takes only for herself. I've lived enough of them to know what those minutes are worth. That's where COTI started.

It started, really, with a hair towel my teenage daughter wouldn't give up. An old one from the Justice store, thin, nearly worn through, and it really didn't work. But it was lightweight enough that it actually stayed on her head, and that one accidental thing turned out to be the whole idea.

For about the last fifteen years, my days have belonged to my children, three of them born in three years. When a little of my own time started coming back, I built my first business, a service-based one, in my city. While I'm glad I started with a service-based business, it taught me what I really wanted: to make a product, and to make something that could reach a woman anywhere she happened to be, not bound to one place.

The hair towel idea actually arrived by accident. Over two years after my previous service business, I had a zoom meeting with a textile mill in Portugal about a knitted terry that they crafted in-house. That same week, I noticed my teenage daughter wearing that old worn-out Justice store hair towel and that's when I knew that this fabric would make an amazing hair towel: the lightweight feel, the knitted terry, the little bit of stretch so it all fell in place to start.

I knew that the product had to be made well before I knew what that product was. I wanted to build from a place known for its textiles so that's why I went with Portugal. I could have made the hair towel for less elsewhere and priced it lower, but quality was the thing I wasn't willing to give up.

COTI is made for the private half of the day and it belongs to any woman, in any season. I've been the one with fifteen minutes and a house full of small children and I've also been the one with a whole quiet evening to myself. Single, married, kids, no kids, the minutes look different but they matter the same. When mine were small, some days it was fifteen minutes in the shower and some days not even that interrupted by a small sweet voice. But those minutes, however long, were mine. They still are, in whatever amount each season allows.

I've reached a point in my life where I'd rather have fewer things, made better, than a house full of things that fall apart. I wanted one of those better things for my time, no matter how long I had to myself.

That's COTI. Made by someone who uses it, for the private part of your day.