JAVIN SOH
Founder, CradleSloth
What does “passion” and the “pursuit of excellence” mean to you, and how has your definition of it evolved throughout your career and personal journey?
At the start of my career, I thought passion meant loving what you do, and excellence meant being the best at it. Today, I see both quite differently.
Passion is the willingness to stay with something long after the excitement has worn off. Excellence is the discipline to keep improving something even when most people would already consider it good enough.
I spent nine years training in architecture, followed by seven years in the direct-to-consumer space, including as Chief Product Officer leading product development and the business. Today, I am the Founder of CradleSloth. Across all those chapters, I realised that the work I enjoy most is taking an everyday problem and obsessing over how it can be solved better. With CradleSloth, that problem is sleep wellness, starting with something as seemingly simple as the pillow. But the deeper I went into sleep, ergonomics, materials, and understanding how differently people rest, the more I realised how much room there was to improve.
Grand Seiko’s pursuit of excellence is rooted in attention to detail, where even the smallest elements contribute to the whole. What are the details that you refuse to compromise on, and why are they important to achieving excellence?
The details that matter most are often the ones customers may never consciously notice.
When we develop the CradleSloth pillow collection, I obsess over things like foam firmness, the curvature supporting the neck, how quickly the material rebounds, the height differences between sleeping positions, the texture and cooling properties of the fabric, and even how naturally your arm rests against the pillow.
Individually, none of these details sounds revolutionary. But together, they determine whether someone wakes up thinking, “I slept well.” That is something my architecture background taught me. Good design is rarely one dramatic gesture. It is hundreds of small decisions working together.
Your industry typically requires a willingness to challenge convention and find better ways of doing things. How do you approach design and innovation in your own work, and how have they shaped your pursuit of excellence?
I usually start by questioning assumptions.
One of the biggest assumptions in the pillow industry is that a pillow primarily supports your head. But anatomically, I believe the more important conversation is about the neck. That shift in perspective has influenced much of how we design at CradleSloth. Rather than asking, “How do we make another comfortable pillow?”, I ask, “Why are pillows designed this way and what would we do differently if we started from the problem again?”
This means I prototype a lot. Our products rarely come from one brilliant idea. They come from testing, rejecting, adjusting, and repeating. Innovation does not have to look futuristic. Sometimes innovation is simply making something familiar work significantly better.
Grand Seiko’s approach to watchmaking is guided by pillars such as precision, craftsmanship, aesthetics, refinement, and innovation. Which of these resonates most strongly with you, and why?Refinement resonates with me most.
Innovation naturally attracts attention because it creates something new. But refinement is what turns a good idea into an exceptional product. I have always enjoyed that process, looking at something that already works and asking how it can be made 5% better, then another 5% better.
I think refinement also requires humility. You need to accept that your first idea is probably not your best idea, listen carefully to how people actually use what you create, and be willing to change it.
Looking at your own pursuit of excellence, what is one lesson or principle that you believe applies to anyone who is committed to mastering their craft?
Never confuse experience with mastery.
The longer you work in an industry, the easier it becomes to believe you already know how things should be done. I think that is often when people stop improving. Some of the most useful questions I still ask myself are very basic ones: Why is this done this way? Is there a better way? What are we missing? Starting CradleSloth after spending years in the ergonomic furniture industry reinforced that for me.
Mastery, to me, is not reaching a stage where you have all the answers. It is developing the discipline to keep asking better questions. The moment you believe there is nothing left to improve is probably the moment someone else starts improving beyond you.
Javin is wearing the SLGH033 (Green Birch, Mechanical)
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