Standing Out in a Saturated Market: Business Tips from Sheets & Giggle
Sheets & Giggles creates sustainable bedding and other home textiles out of eucalyptus trees. (Soo cool!) And this kind of bedding uses up to 96% less water than cotton sheets to make them. They also use energy, no insecticides, and no pesticides. (Cotton can use up to 24% of the world’s insecticides on any given year.) These sheets are also more breathable, so if you’re a hot sleeper, they distribute moisture perfectly across the filaments, keeping you cooler. The business model of this company is relaxed, funny, and truthful, something many consumers appreciate.
The company has over 200 products and has been in business since October, 2017 but didn’t start selling until a year later. They now have over 50,000 customers.
Keep reading to hear more about this sustainable company and our convo with the CEO and Founder, Colin McIntosh.
Business Model
We asked Colin if there was anything he would change about the business if he could go back in time. “It would have been a subscription service. Something along those lines, whether it’s a physical product or a software product, there would have been some type of recurring subscription. So that’s the one thing that I think I’ve learned through this that is still missing from this business model.”
Nowadays, subscription business models are becoming more and more popular, so Colin has his head in the space!
Colin also knew he wanted to create a differentiated brand, something that nobody had ever seen before. He was enticed by the idea of having a blank canvas to be creative with. And he noticed that every other brand in the bedding space was pretty similar. They focus on the white sheets, white walls, and as Colin put it, “there’s always like a French press coffee place on the edge of the bed.”
Colin explained that he had a lot of fun building a totally different brand in this space. The company takes customers on a fun, educational journey that doesn’t take itself too seriously. So why not have fun with it?
The company tries to create messaging that helps customers make a smart choice. But they aren’t suggesting to be wasteful if you don’t really need new bedding.
“We’re not saying that you should be wasteful and buy new ones if you don’t need new ones. But at some point in the next few years, you will need new bedsheets. And when you do, if you are a fan of really soft things and you don’t want to overheat at night, you want to get better REM cycles, and you’re a big sustainability nut, these are the sheets. You should buy Sheets & Giggles.”
The team has a lot of fun with the brand. Colin describes it as a fun tightrope to walk because it’s an upscale, luxurious product that’s very sustainable. And brand advertises mostly with jokes and memes.
Finding Your Customer
As kids and teens, we can get overwhelmed if someone doesn’t like us. But as you get older, it’s natural to be ok with the fact that not everyone will like you, and it’s ok.
“The opposite of love isn’t hate, right? It’s indifference. And so for me, that’s a big thing that I keep in my head, is I never want people to be indifferent to what we’re doing. I don’t want to post a picture of those white sheets on that white wall with that French press coffee and get four likes on Instagram because people are like, ‘Holy shit. I’ve seen this content in 1000 other places.’ We will never write about thread count, ever. There are 87,000 articles about thread count on the internet that you can find.”
Colin also talked to us about the golden rule: treat other people the way you want to be treated.
“I think that more people can use that in the world right now, like treat people with kindness and fairness and love and respect. And I think that what you put in is what you get out in spades. So I’ll just leave people with that because I think that that’s the way that we approach our business and the way that I approach my life. And I think that, if anything happens in 2021, I want it to be a resurgence of that type of mentality.”
Now that’s an outlook we can get behind.
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