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Blu Sleep Delivers A Complete Sleep Experience
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Blu Sleep Delivers A Complete Sleep Experience
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By Gretchen Kast
Over the past 15 years, Blu Sleep has cultivated a brand known for its quality, innovation and style— delivering high-end comfort, eye-catching looks and wellness-driven messaging with its suite of foam mattresses and pillows. Now, the company is once again expanding the scope of its portfolio, tackling the top-of-bed category with the same attention to detail that has always set its products apart. Staying true to its focused approach, Blu Sleep has developed a curated selection of products that are dynamic enough to stand on their own in a retail setting—and, together, work to deliver a total sleep experience. By backing its entire line-up with strong margins and comprehensive marketing and fulfillment support, Blu Sleep is helping retailers meet the needs of the moment and build towards continued success in the future.
From the beginning, Blu Sleep has been committed to delivering innovative sleep products made from highend materials. Starting out as a foam supplier, the company was able to build on its expertise to develop an extensive array of pillows before branching out to mattresses as well. Driven by an ethos that values continuous improvement, Blu Sleep has honed its vision over the years—making thoughtful updates, edits and additions to its portfolio. Today, the company offers four mattress models, 14 pillows—and now a new slate of sheets, duvet covers, throw blankets and even a leisure robe.
“It’s all about the experience,” explains Alex Ciccolella, CEO of Blu Sleep. “We’re trying to bring, not just a mattress, not just a pillow and not just the sheets or comforter, but the whole package. That’s what we’re focusing on right now, just bringing the whole sleep experience to retailers and the end-consumers.”
While the new top-of-bed accessories may be a departure for Blu Sleep in terms of components, the soft goods were designed around many of the same qualities and attributes that have always set the brand’s foam products apart. They are made from high-end materials sourced from Italy, tout luxury feels and deliver long-lasting, temperature-regulating comfort. More than just adding to its list of available products, these items build and expand upon the strong wellness-oriented brand message that Blu Sleep has been cultivating in recent years—and equips retailers with a cohesive sleep story that will connect with consumers both in-store and online.
Expanding Into Top-Of-Bed
Driven by specific requests from its retail partners, Blu Sleep began exploring the idea of top-of-bed about a year and a half ago. Though sometimes seen as secondary products, sleep accessories provide valuable sales opportunities to bedding retailers— whether by increasing average ticket price or giving consumers new reasons to buy on a more regular basis.
As it has with all of its products, Blu Sleep took great care in sourcing the materials for these new accessories. The company had a clear vision for how the sheets and blankets should feel and function, and collaborated closely with suppliers to bring them to life.
“When you’re developing new products, you’re developing new relationships,” Ciccolella explains. “With the pandemic, it was a little more challenging to travel so we had to do things in a different way than we would normally, but we were still able to develop an amazing relationship with our suppliers and also with our staff. It’s a balancing act—you need to have the right pricing with the right quality and the right flow of goods—but when you have fun doing it, it becomes easier.”
The goal was to find the fabrics and materials that would enhance the comfort without sacrificing any of the temperature regulation benefits that can be found across the Blu Sleep portfolio. The result is a line of luxurious products that elevate the sleep experience to new levels.
Retailing for $334, the Alpina throw blanket offers consumers an attainable opportunity to luxuriate in sumptuous comfort. Made
from high-end Italian cashmere, the throw features a soft, cozy feel and actually works to regulate temperature—keeping the sleeper warmer in the winter and cooler in the summer. The Ostuni sheets are made from highend percale cotton, featuring a crisp feel and a matte finish at a $389 price point.
For the consumer who is interested in eco-friendly bedding (or simply looking for a different feel), the Baia waffle blanket and the Paradiso crinkled sheets and duvet cover are all made from GOTS-certified organic cotton. Retailing for $299, the Baia blanket features a soft, textured finish and a casual look—while the Paradiso set comes with a matte finish and a crisp feel and retails for $414.
Blu Sleep then rounded out its new accessory options with the Favo Leisure Robe. Made from fine cotton jersey and plush micro terry, this classically-styled robe comes with a $99 retail price tag. In addition to offering retailers a creative add-on opportunity, the robe further builds on the company’s wellness messaging, which positions self-care not as an occasional indulgence but a daily (or nightly!) practice.
That message has become all the more relevant over the past year, as consumers spent their time at home during the pandemic upgrading their spaces. As the conversation around mental and physical health took center stage, finding a way to get good quality sleep became more of a priority than ever before.
“With the pandemic, I think people are recognizing the importance of their home and sleep, and the need to balance their stress and their health,” explains Elizabeth Dell’Accio, president of Blu Sleep. “People are also realizing that if they buy something that’s cheap and not long-lasting, it really doesn’t help them. More and more retailers have been asking us to stick with that high quality, and to not compete with the other brands in the race to the bottom.”
In order to clearly communicate that level of quality on the retail floor, Blu Sleep infused its new offerings with a sleek, more elegant look that extends from the products themselves to the packaging. Bold colors have always been a mainstay for the Blu Sleep brand, but for this line the company adopted a more muted color palette of blues and grays. For the packaging, the company designed classic linen boxes that reflect the true value of the product inside.
“When we introduced the way the sheets are packaged—the way the box opens, the messaging, the way it comes with tissue paper and ribbon—it’s all about the experience, from the moment you receive it to the moment you sleep on it,” Dell’Accio explains.
One of the keys to Blu Sleep’s ongoing success is its ability to zero in on the fine details of its products while still situating them within the bigger picture. The company views the sleep experience holistically, understanding how each element of the system interacts with one another.
“It’s the whole package,” says Ciccolella. “If you have a very comfortable mattress but your
pillow is not comfortable, then everything’s not comfortable. If your sheets are not comfortable, then everything’s not comfortable. If your comforter is too hot, too cold, too heavy, that makes a difference as well. We’re trying to match everything to work in harmony, in addition to looking and feeling fantastic.”
A Carefully Curated Mattress Collection
And for that balancing act to really work, there must be a solid base. The mattress is the cornerstone of any sleep experience— and Blu Sleep has taken great care to ensure that its offerings meet the needs of both the retailer and the consumer. Over the years, the company has worked to optimize its unique design in order to maximize the benefits of its foam technologies.
“We’ve been doing this for several years, introducing mattresses, but I think now we have narrowed it down to exactly what our customers needs are,” Dell’Accio explains. Today, Blu Sleep has curated a concise four-bed collection designed to connect with a wide variety of consumers without overwhelming them with choice.
“We’re trying to make it easy for retailers to sell the product,” Ciccolella says. “We’re very conscientious about their margins and what they expect and need. So we try to make the product simple to understand and simple to explain, while still having a lot of benefits and features as well.”
Thanks to its advanced foam technology, Blu Sleep is able to offer a more streamlined line of mattresses that adapt to a wide array of body shapes and sizes—making it easier for the consumer to navigate the options. Each Blu Sleep mattress features a base foam made with AirPods, the company’s innovative support structure comprised of individual foam pods. With each pod functioning independently from one another, this system is able to deliver contouring comfort for every unique body. The design also allows air to circulate throughout the base of the mattress, helping to disperse heat and humidity and establish the basis for an overall cooler product.
By maintaining that consistency at the support level, the company is able to offer more meaningful variety within the comfort layers. Each Blu Sleep mattress features its own unique configuration of foam layers—delivering distinct comfort feels, superior pressure relief and temperature regulation. When merchandised together, the four models create a clear step-up story that ranges from $1,899 to $3,599 in queen.
Pillows That Bring The Wow-Factor
Of course, the full sleep package would not be complete without the pillow. Like its mattress options, Blu Sleep has spent years optimizing and refining its pillow offerings—cultivating a comprehensive line-up that delivers both fun and function.
The company’s latest addition to this category is the Ceramo, which delivers both cooling and performance benefits. Made from plush Air Memory foam, the pillow is finished with a bio ceramic gel coating, which works to return far infrared energy back into the body—a process that has been shown to help improve blood oxygen levels and reduce joint inflammation. It also creates a cool-tothe-touch feel that brings a real wow-factor to the retail floor.
Reassuring Retailer Support
“We’re very passionate about our products and our brand and sleep all together, but we also offer good margins and that’s very important to a retailer as well,” Dell’Accio explains. “They like our passion and they like our product, but they also need to know that they’re going to make a profit.”
Blu Sleep is proud to be able to offer its retail partners that reassurance. The company listens closely to its retail partners and their needs, and incorporates that feedback as they develop and fine-tune its offerings.
And unlike many other bedding companies, Blu Sleep has navigated the pandemic with little to no supply chain disruptions, thanks to the strong relationships it has built with suppliers over the years. After a few delays early on in the pandemic, the company was able to readjust its inventory levels to match the increased demand for its products and has been on track ever since. Today, Blu Sleep is fully stocked with product that is readily available to retailers.
“It’s all about choosing the right suppliers, developing the right relationships, thinking ahead,” Ciccolella explains. “If it’s hard to get stuff, you have to think ahead, place orders ahead of time and make sure everything is working properly.”
That kind of strategic thinking paid off in more ways than one. Prior to the pandemic, Blu Sleep had already begun to expand its fulfillment capabilities to offer drop-shipping for its retail customers—which proved to be all the more beneficial over the past year and a half, as more and more people turned to shopping online. The same goes for IT and marketing support, two departments that Blu Sleep has transitioned in-house. This move has allowed the company to offer more dedicated support to its retail partners looking to boost their own ecommerce capabilities. For added ease, the company has also equipped its website with a comprehensive retailer portal where its partners can go in and place product orders directly.
Every decision the company makes ties back to this idea of helping retailers succeed. With these new accessory items, Blu Sleep is solidifying its position as a one-stop-shop. Not only does this help its retail partners diversify their merchandising opportunities, but it also enables the company to offer better shipping rates as well.
Blu Sleep has carved a distinctive niche for itself in today’s bedding landscape, bringing both passion and pragmatism, luxury feels and attainable price points, attention-to-detail and big picture thinking. Over the past 15 years, the company has continually forged new paths in ways that are thoughtful and sustainable—expanding into product categories that further support its overall brand identity. And through this measured approach, Blu Sleep has become an invaluable resource for retailers—giving them the products and tools to provide today’s consumers with the full sleep experience.
