Can this contraption really help you sleep on a plane?
EPHI Zlotnitsky landed in Washington as a 22-year-old immigrant from Israel in July 1989.
The next day, the former Israel paratrooper, who barely spoke English, walked into a local kosher deli and got a job. As he recalls it: “The owner said, ‘I don’t have a job for you.’ I said, ‘I’m not leaving.’ He asked me, what can I do?”
“Whatever you want,” Zlotnitsky replied. “Wash dishes. Clean floors.”
He did all that - and also made a mean Israeli salad.
Fast forward 28 years. The peripatetic Zlotnitsky, now 50, has started several companies, including a real estate company and a Maryland-based software firm.
But it’s his foray into airline travel that got my attention. Zlotnitsky is not only an example of the rich contributions that immigrants bring to America.
The invention that catapulted him to fame?
The aircraft pillow with the risible name of JetComfy.
“I wasn’t the brightest guy,” said Zlotnitsky, who was born and raised 20 minutes north of Tel Aviv. “But I’ve always been this guy who was thinking outside the box. I don’t believe in ‘no.’ “
His latest mission is fixing sleep problems for travellers.
The airspace for plane pillows is as crowded as the skies. The horseshoe pillow has been around for decades. A former Virgin Atlantic flight attendant, a few years back, invented a Jshaped pillow.
“Airlines are cramming you in and there is less space and less everything,” he said. “At least you want to sleep normal.”
Zlotnitsky’s pillow is available now on Amazon Prime and at Luggage Plus stores and will be offered online by Walmart later this month.
It weighs less than a pound and measures 9.5-by-5.5 inches. It looks nothing like a pillow - more like a foam headrest attached to a foot-long pole supported by the arm of your seat.
Zlotnitsky is betting that, among the more than three billion people who fly every year, there is enough of a market for him to sell millions of JetComfys. “We plan to sell over 350,000 units by mid-2018 in the US alone,” he said. “We are working to start distribution is Europe, China, Australia and the Middle East.” — Washington Post