Happy Habits: East alum Karrie Dean started Happy Habitat, an eco-friendly blanket company, as an outlet for her creativity

From doodling in coloring books as a child to taking art classes throughout high school, East Alum Karrie Dean has always had a knack for design. This hobby turned into a business when she started her own company — Happy Habitat.

Happy Habitat is a company that hand-knits eco-friendly blankets that Karrie started back in 2011 after getting laid off from her previous job in advertising. 

“I had a great [advertising] gig, I was having fun and I worked at a really cool place,” Karrie said. “I knew if I was going to switch to something else, it needed to be better, something really important and special because we only live once.”

Karrie wanted to explore art in a less traditional way, so she thought blankets would be a suitable creative medium.

At the time, Karrie was a new mom and spent lots of time at home. She was brainstorming possible artistic yet functional products that she could create to make people happy in their surroundings. Eventually Karrie landed on eco-friendly blankets.

Before realizing blankets were her passion, Karrie had been experimenting with a few of her own patterns and was putting them on stationery and phone cases. But with the dual function of the blankets, as visual and tactile art pieces, Karrie knew they were the product she wanted to make.

“If you’re talking to a friend and you throw them a blanket and they put it over their lap, they instantly feel more at home,” Karrie said. “It’s like a cozy factor.”  

The hand-stitched blankets are designed by Karrie, sent to a third-generation sewing mill on the East coast and then manufactured. The eco-friendly blankets are made from pre-consumer fibers. When a shirt is made and they cut the shape, the scraps that fall to the floor are collected, color sorted and respun to make new yarns. 

While the material that goes into the blankets is important to Karrie, she specifically chose to manufacture the blankets in the United States due to the small distance. According to Karrie, if the product is eco-friendly but is coming from halfway across the world, you’re defeating the purpose because of the carbon emissions from planes.

Sophomore Phoebe Kaneda admires her mom constantly working on Happy Habitat and seeing the impact on the community.

“It’s weird because sometimes I’ll go to someone’s house and I’ll realize they have a Happy Habitat blanket which is so funny,” Phoebe said.

Karrie presented Happy Habitat and her entrepreneuring knowledge to the Digital Design Project Management class on Jan. 30 led by business teacher Jennifer Hair. Audience members like sophomore Kara Parrett and junior Willa Cosgrove got to learn about what it takes to start a business and hear about Karrie’s company through a presentation.

“She started off talking about East, college and getting a degree,” Parrett said. “Then she went through the fundamentals of making her blankets, like using different color pallets and choosing the different design work that’s going to be on them.”

While sitting in the class and observing some of the blanket samples Karrie showed during her presentation, Willa recognized some of the designs and patterns. Later that day, Willa went home and checked the tag of her blanket and realized she owned a Happy Habitat blanket.

“[The blanket] is really fun and comfortable, and it’s a good accent in the room,” Willa said. “By looking at the blanket I can see that [Karrie’s] personality comes out a lot. She seems like a very fun person.”

Even after being successful for 12 years, Karrie still worries about marketing and promotion especially with the increase in cheap online products. Her Instagram account @happyhabitat sprung her business with 14,000 followers.

“The internet is jammed,” Karrie said. “You really have to fight to be seen and if you’re not a player like Crate and Barrel or Pottery Barn then you don’t get on the front of Google, unless you’re paying somebody to get that.”

Karrie’s biggest takeaway from her journey with Happy Habitat is that people need you as much as you need them. Stores are always looking for new products to stock their shelves with and blankets are always in demand, and she’s partnered with places like West Elm.

“PR people need a story and magazines need to talk about eco-friendly business or eco-friendly textiles,” Karrie said. “So when people say, ‘Why will anyone care about this?’ it’s like, ‘No, people need you as much as you need them.’”