EL PASO, Texas (KTSM) – An El Paso businesswoman is aiming big with a new product and promises to give back to the Borderland as a way of saying thank you for the support she received while she was building her business from the ground up.
Beatriz Landin, from Tamaulipas, Mexico, is the creator behind the Wander Pillow, an innovative neck pillow with a blanket stored inside, perfect for travelers.
Landin said the official website launched this year, and her product will be available on Amazon in April, shipping her product worldwide.
But what is so special about the Wander Pillow?
Landin explained the product features high-quality foam, a washable design, and an attached blanket that zips back into the pillow. It’s the perfect solution to avoid juggling multiple items while traveling.
Landin said she has accomplished amazing things with this innovative product. For starters, she was featured in the Top 100 Innovators and Entrepreneurs Magazine, which according to its website, “publishes the most popular biography-based titles in the industry.”
Video courtesy of Landin
She also got fifth place nationwide in a competition to be featured in Forbes Magazine and a session with Daymond John, an investor on the ABC reality television series “Shark Tank.”
And while Landin is in a good position to expand her product, it wasn’t always this way.
Landin arrived in Juarez in 1996, where she got her accounting degree from the Instituto Tecnológico de Ciudad Juárez.
As a single mom of three, and wanting a better future for her family, she decided to get her citizenship and moved to El Paso 15 years ago.
Landin said the road was not easy, and she even faced homelessness back in the day, but her resilience paid off for her and her family once they were in El Paso.
Landin said she served as a chief financial officer for a charter school in El Paso, and as a finance director for the City of Anthony, New Mexico. She added that her work in education even led to research collaborations with Harvard University in the field of technology in online teaching.
Years later, she is now happily married, with one of her daughters serving in the Army.
“I’ve always used to invent stuff, and when traveling, I realized it was too complicated to carry that many items with you when you are on the plane. Especially blankets, I was always losing blankets, and I was always cold.” she said.
That’s how she came up with the idea of her product — experiencing the burden herself of “juggling” items in the airport.
Landin said her next step is to “give back to the community that helped her grow.”
“I want the Latino community to get their spirits up, to keep working, and know that everything is temporary,” Landin said.
Landin said a goal of hers is to have her product manufactured here in El Paso and hire El Pasoans and the Latino community as a way of helping locals.
As a way of giving back to her community, Landin will also be sponsoring MMA professional fighter Elizabeth Rodriguez in April, saying she wants to help Latino athletes achieve their dreams.
What’s next in Landin’s journey?
At the end of the year, Landin will be featured on Amazon Prime Video’s “The Blox” season 21, a competition show about entrepreneurship.
“Businesses from across the country were chosen to compete in a week-long intensive bootcamp designed to take their companies to the next level,” according to Prime Video’s website about the show.
There’s still a long future ahead in Landin’s career, but she’s living proof that hard work and dedication get you far.
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