Velvet Hippo (noun): an affectionate term for a Pit Bull-type dog. Just adopted a velvet hippo from the shelter today.
Spend one weekend with a Pit Bull and the nickname writes itself. They are short-haired, barrel-chested, relentlessly affectionate, and built like something out of a nature documentary. There is warmth in the term, and a quiet bit of advocacy too, because these are dogs that have been badly misrepresented for decades, and a lot of them are sitting in shelters right now waiting for someone to look past the reputation. Hippos themselves are objectively terrifying, but that is a separate conversation.
What a Pit Bull actually wants, under all the bravado, is simple: to be loved, and to sleep. That second desire is the entire founding insight behind Velvet Hippo, and the more interesting story is how two designers turned it into a product. We talked with co-founder Shalina Chen about the problem they were really solving, the rescue dogs at the center of it, and why a dog bed is harder to design well than it looks.
The problem was the dog bed aisle itself
Plenty of brands start with a gap in the market. Velvet Hippo started with a gap in a living room. Chen, a product designer who studied fashion and was working at Madewell, and her partner Jason Horvath, an award-winning furniture designer whose work has been recognized by the Smithsonian, were furnishing their Brooklyn apartment when they kept hitting the same wall.
“We were furnishing the whole apartment, sofa and all, and the only thing we couldn’t track down was a bed for the dogs,” Chen says. “Nothing on the market suited the space we were building.” With two Pittie rescues, Lola and Rasta, needing somewhere proper to stretch out, she did the thing designers do: she made her own. “My background is in fashion and design, so I stitched a few prototypes at home, and the whole thing snowballed from there pretty naturally.”
That origin matters because it explains the product. Velvet Hippo did not set out to make a cheaper dog bed or a plusher one. It set out to make one a designer would willingly put in a beautiful room, which turns out to be a surprisingly unmet brief.
Designing for two clients at once: the human and the dog
The hard part of a good dog bed is that it has two customers with opposite priorities. The human wants something that looks intentional. The dog wants something it can flop, dig, and chew without consequence. Most beds pick a side. Velvet Hippo’s whole design challenge was refusing to.
The result is a streamlined, hexagonal, stone-washed canvas bed stuffed with recycled poly-fill, a rounded shape Chen describes as “donut-ish, without literally being a donut,” something that did not exist on the market at the time. “For a home, we wanted a piece that felt natural and considered, the kind of thing that mirrors your own taste,” she says. “It had to earn its keep too, though. The final design lives right in between those two goals.”
Functionality, for a dog product, mostly means surviving the dog. Chen designed washability in from the start. “Living with two heavy chewers, I know firsthand how fast dog gear gets destroyed,” she says. “We set out to build something deliberately tough, made to stick around,” reusable rather than something you rebuy every six months. The minimalism is not just an aesthetic preference; it is the same instinct that runs through both founders’ work. “So much of what you’d grab off the shelf at a big chain, you’d never actually want on display at home. It tips into frou frou fast. We aimed for pared-back but still practical.”
Lola, Rasta, and the case for adoption
The brand’s name is a love letter to its two muses, and to the breed. “Anyone who’s lived with a Pittie already gets the phrase,” Chen says. “It’s this fond nickname for the breed, that sleek coat that reads a little hippo-like. The name never left us. And I feel strongly about adoption, so I nudge people toward it whenever I can.”
The two dogs are studies in contrast. “Rasta’s a total sweetheart, a teddy bear who wants nothing more than to be inside with us. Lola’s the reverse. She rules the place, no question who’s in charge. There’s some herding dog in her, I’m sure of it, so she’s fussy, deeply affectionate, but full of opinions. Watching the two of them side by side is a delight.” Chen did not grow up with Pitties; Horvath adopted them before they met. “Pitties weren’t part of my childhood at all, but I’ve come to adore them. Everything the breed gets wrong, all that unfair press, I only really came to understand once they were living in my house.”
That education is, in a quiet way, the point of the brand. A beautifully designed bed built around two rescue Pit Bulls is an argument for the breed that does not have to be spoken.
Two designers, one company
Building a brand with your partner sounds like a recipe for friction. Chen frames it as a Venn diagram. “Sure, our roles cross over, but our strong suits are different. Jason steps back from the daily grind, yet he’s the strategist, the one thinking about where we’re headed. I’m the person parked at the spreadsheet handling the nuts and bolts. We both come from design, him furniture, me fashion, so each of us contributes something the other doesn’t, and it just clicks. I got lucky.”
That split, furniture sensibility plus fashion sensibility, is exactly why the beds read as home goods rather than pet supplies.
Where the brand is headed
Velvet Hippo does not want to be a dog-bed company forever. “Our focus sits where home goods and pet goods meet, well beyond just toys or food,” Chen says. “The goal is to keep weaving our lives and our pets’ lives together, since they’re family. We’re designing for the whole house, not one corner of it.” More beds, more accessories, all built on the same premise that started it: pet products should be things you actually want to live with.
What to know before you buy one
A few practical notes the conversation surfaces. The bed is built around durability and machine washing, so it suits chewers and shedders better than most designer-looking options, the usual tradeoff with a stylish bed. The hexagonal bolstered shape is made for dogs who like to curl and lean against an edge rather than sprawl flat, which fits a lot of Pitties and similar barrel-chested breeds well. And because Velvet Hippo sells direct rather than through Amazon, you buy it straight from the brand, which is worth knowing if you are comparing it against big-box options on price alone.
References
- ASPCA, “Position Statement on Pit Bulls” — on breed misrepresentation and shelter outcomes.
- Smithsonian Cooper Hewitt, design recognition resources for contemporary furniture designers.
