Today, Sunday Bedding is one of Singapore’s top bedsheet brands, with two retail stores in Singapore and a loyal customer base that keeps coming back. Clara and Alex have built a brand that people bring into their most personal spaces, and in some cases, their most difficult moments.
But it started with a frustrating afternoon in a department store, a thirty-year family textile legacy, and two founders who had no idea that their hardest lessons were still ahead of them.
How a Shopping Trip & a Family Factory Started Sunday Bedding
Clara did not set out to build a bedding brand. She had built a career in management consulting, completed her MBA at Columbia University, and was working in data analytics at Amazon in Seattle when she met Alex. When Alex relocated to Singapore, the two of them went shopping for sheets for their first home together.
It was genuinely frustrating.
“Department stores, not much choice, zero transparency, and so much confusion around thread count. Everything was marketed as ‘high thread count’ but you had no idea what you were actually buying.”
What made it worse was that Alex came from a family with over thirty years in home textiles manufacturing. They knew exactly how these products were made, and that what they were looking at was not worth it.
That frustration, combined with Alex’s manufacturing background and Clara’s commercial and e-commerce interests, became the foundation of Sunday Bedding in 2018.
The first thing they did was sit down with the merchandisers at Alex’s family factory. These were people who had worked with major global retailers and seen every fabric construction imaginable. Clara and Alex asked for something designed for Singapore’s heat. The answer was bamboo. Back then, bamboo bedding was barely a thing in Singapore.
They launched with two solid neutral colours and one printed design created in collaboration with a New York-based artist. Clean, considered, and nothing like what was already on the shelf.
The Mall Leases That Nearly Broke Sunday Bedding
For the first stretch, Clara kept her full time role at her job while Alex ran the business day to day. Mornings and evenings were for Sunday Bedding. Everything in between was her day job. It was a deliberate choice, one that let them test, learn, and build momentum without betting everything at once.
By the time Clara made the leap to full time, the business had enough traction to feel confident about.
Then came the decision that nearly undid all of it.
Clara and Alex signed two mall leases simultaneously. It also happened to be around the time Clara was pregnant. Looking back, they were not in the right headspace. They had not done enough due diligence. And they had seriously underestimated how different running a physical retail space would be compared to running an e-commerce business.
“The two to three years during that period were really challenging. It stretched us thin in every sense. Financially, physically, emotionally.”
Those years were not about growth. They were about survival. Every week was firefighting. There was no headspace for strategy, no bandwidth to push the business forward. Just the relentless work of keeping the stores open and getting through each day.
When they finally exited the leases, it was painful. But it was also a relief.
“We could finally lift our heads up again and think clearly.”
What came out of those years was not just recovery. It was a fundamental shift in how Clara and Alex made decisions. Before, they said yes to every opportunity, every collaboration and every potential channel. After that phase of their business, they became deliberate about everything.
“Now we are much more intentional with every decision we make.”
A Complicated Pregnancy & the Hardest Year of Their Lives
In the middle of building Sunday Bedding into what it is today, Clara and Alex became parents.
And worst still, Clara’s pregnancy was far from an easy one. She experienced preeclampsia and delivered five weeks early via C-section. Their daughter Emma spent time in a neonatal intensive care unit. Clara was travelling to and from the hospital to visit her while recovering from the birth, exhausted in a way that went beyond anything the business had ever asked of her.
To help them manage their parenthood better, Clara and Alex divided the night feeds. Clara covered the 4am feed. Alex took midnight. Even with that structure, their sleep was fragmented, the anxiety was real, and the mental load never fully switched off. Clara was tracking Emma’s schedule, managing the household, running a business, and recovering from a difficult birth all at once.
“It’s not just about the task itself. It’s also about the planning required behind each task. There are so many small things to keep track of, every hour of every day.”
What carried them through was the same thing that had carried them through the mall lease years. The commitment to keep going, and the reminder of why they started.
One message in particular stays with Clara. A customer wrote to tell them that his wife had a chronic illness and spent long stretches in hospital. What brought her comfort during those stays was the bedding she had bought from Sunday Bedding. She had brought it with her.
“We sell bedsheets. We are not saving lives. But to know that something we made brought a little comfort to someone going through something really difficult, that means everything.”
The Lesson Clara and Alex Carry
Clara and Alex did not build Sunday Bedding by spotting a gap in the market. They built it because they experienced the frustration firsthand, had the background to do something about it, and refused to walk away when things got hard.
The mall leases taught them to be intentional. Parenthood taught them to be present. And the customer whose wife brought their sheets to hospital reminded them that what they had built was real and that it mattered to people.
If there is one thing Clara would say to any founder sitting on an idea they have not yet acted on, it is this:
“Don’t just leap because you believe in something. Belief is important, but it’s not enough on its own. Test it first. Talk to people, gather feedback, have conversations you might find uncomfortable. Put your idea in front of strangers, not just friends who will be supportive.”
Today, their Joo Chiat flagship store, that has every detail chosen with intention, is the clearest expression of everything those hard years taught them.
You can browse through Sunday Bedding’s bedding sets on their official website here or visit them in their stores.
Sunday Bedding Flagship Store at Joo Chiat: 362 Joo Chiat Road, Singapore 427604
Sunday Bedding at Holland Road: Holland Road Shopping Centre, 211 Holland Avenue, #01-06, Singapore 278967
