If Sheets Could Speak

Brother-sister duo Vin Li Yap and Zer Ken Yap on launching their premium bedding brand Kapas Living during a pandemic

-  Tania Jayatilaka

Vin Li Yap grins and glances at some toys lying on her living room sofa: evidence of her son’s playtime activities. Upstairs, the familyfriendly scene switches to a more start-up inspired setup as she reveals a tastefully decorated home office space, rife with indoor plants, soft grey rugs and wall shelves lined with books and various plaques from her days as an investment banker. Free of toys and distractions, this is her base of operations for Kapas Living.

Vin and her brother Zer Ken Yap co-founded Kapas Living last October, an online business that offers luxuriously soft cotton bedsheets, duvet covers and pillow cases—minus the hefty price tag and lofty claims of thread counts that number in the thousands. But wait; doesn’t higher thread count represent better quality bedsheets? Turns out the answer is no, as Vin and Ken discovered when running their other business Plush Services, a short-term management company that flips homes into Airbnbs. “When we started managing homes, we would usually buy sheets with a pretty high thread count,” shares Ken. “We’d send them to the wash, and boom—they’d rip to shreds. It was frustrating.”