2 minute read
Last Call
LAST CALL William Spangenberg and Louis Fiacco, winners of Holy Cross Shark Tank
Veer Mudambi
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Worcester Magazine USA TODAY NETWORK
Thinking back to your college years — one thing that may spring to mind are the uncomfortable dorm beds. It’s safe to assume they haven’t gotten much better, and as a result, many students use a mattress topper for a better night’s sleep. However, these are inevitably tossed out at the end of the year, leading to excessive waste. Will Spangenberg and Louis Fiacco, seniors at the College of the Holy Cross, hope to fix this. Winners of the Holy Cross Shark Tank competition, the two students have created a service, Sader Sleeps, for their classmates to rent luxury mattresses for the school year or semester, eliminating the need for a mattress topper and cutting down on waste. As members of the EcoAction club at Holy Cross, the sustainability this offers is a key point, but the company also plans to donate 10% of profits toward the Green Fund at Holy Cross, which sponsors environmental initiatives on campus.
How did this idea come about?
Spangenberg: We were moving out in our freshman year and looking around on moveout day and saw a huge mountain of mattress toppers touching the ceiling and said “what an incredible waste.”
Fiacco: The twinsized extralong mattress toppers for the dorm beds wouldn’t fit on most people’s beds at home. And students can’t take mattress toppers home with them if they’re from out of state, so they just get thrown away every year.
S: So we connected with a luxury mattress maker, Sealy, about renting mattresses that could be reused.
F: My uncle actually works with Sealy and that’s how we got our foot in the door.
S: Every year, Holy Cross does a Shark Tank competition. We won against 10 other businesses for the $3,000 prize. It’s actually usually more but with COVID, funding for the competition was cut.
What was the timeline for the project and how else did COVID affect it? S: COVID really hurt us because we planned to implement our mattresses during our junior year but with COVID restrictions and school closures, it got pushed back, but even without that, anyone who has tried to start a business knows there’s always fires to put out. We tried to form the necessary connections during sophomore year and by the end of the year had all the pieces in place. Then we had to discuss implementation with Holy Cross higherups and the social justice aspect — like people wouldn’t get jealous if someone else had a nice mattress and they didn’t because they couldn’t afford to rent it. We’re planning to implement a financial aid plan so anyone who needs a mattress can afford one. This past year we finalized a contract with the school — really exciting to see the culmination of all of our efforts pay off.
Have your sanitization expenses for the mattresses increased postCOVID?
S: Not really — we have a very protective sanitizing process of mattress encasements and we can guarantee that nobody has actually gotten through to your mattress. Even before COVID, we wanted to make sure the students didn’t have to worry about anything but sleeping.
F: We’ve actually seen rising costs in raw materials.
S: There’s just huge supply chain issues because the materials used to make mattresses were also used to make PPE. Also, they also come from China and international tensions have increased cost as well.
Have you decided what you’re going to do with the prize money?
S: That money will go towards existing inventory, advertising the product on campus, particularly Holy Cross, and employees to help install mattresses — there are tons of different applications.
In the future, we hope to design our own luxury mattress for our brand, so we will probably need some seed funding to get that process started with the manufacturing company.
What individual strengths do you guys bring to your partnership?
S: Louis is really passionate and perseveres through everything. He also created our website (www.sadersleeps.com) and finetuned it.
F: I’m a compsci major so I created the layout of the website. Will is a psychology major so he’s better at writing and added all the text and images for the site.
S: In terms of responsibilities, we’re kind of jack of all trades right now. But when we’re trying to sell our product, I’d take on most of that load. Any kind of technical questions about the process or the website, that’s what Louis will take on. We combine really well because we’re really hard working and dedicated.
To clarify, where do things stand right now?
S: We’ve done the first installations for offcampus students. We’re hoping to do our oncampus installations at Holy Cross on August 16. Next year, we want to take that model of a successful year at Holy Cross and expand to other schools.
How big do you see your initial team getting?
S: At Holy Cross, it will probably consist of a few other students but hoping to increase exponentially when we start expanding. We’ll need some expert help but definitely want to set up work study positions at schools.
Finally, where did you get the name Sader Sleeps?
S: Holy Cross’s mascot is the Crusader. It’s often shortened to ‘sader. We just combined those for a catchy name!
Louie Fiacco, left, and Will Spangenberg, Holy Cross students and founders of Sader Sleeps. DYLAN AZARI
