Retail
The $16 Million Battle Over Mermaid Tail Blankets
A new entrepreneur had a quirky idea that went viral. Then she started fighting to protect it.
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Seated on a bar stool in Manhattan’s West Village, Hattie Peze orders a glass of red wine as she flips through photos of mermaid-tail-shaped blankets. (The drink is on the house—her hedge funder husband owns the place.) The entrepreneur lights up when she shows off the bright, fuzzy novelties, leaning forward excitedly in a black-and-blue Diane von Furstenberg dress. She calls herself the “chief mermaid enthusiast.”
In less than five months, Peze, 35, built a multimillion-dollar business hawking mermaid blankets. Yes, mermaid blankets. Launched in the fall of 2015, her company—Blankie Tails—sold about 136,000 of them in the run-up to its first Christmas. It was a fairy tail success story.