Special Feature
Protect-A-Bed Puts Its Customers First
By Gretchen Kast Protect-A-Bed started with a mission to make sleep healthy and ended up creating an entirely new product category. Now, more than 18 years later, the company that developed comfortable mattress protection has expanded its portfolio to offer a wide array of unique sleep accessories—and is recognized as a category leader. While many brands across the bedding industry have been hit by slowed sales due to new online competition, alternative brands and compressed retail tickets, Protect-A-Bed has positioned itself to perform well into the future.
“What makes our business different is that we’re 100% focused on the customer,” ex- plained John Rachid, president of Protect-A- Bed. “While other brands are consolidating, we’re reinvesting, training and reinforcing what we can provide through programs like Grow the
Retail Basket, our Partnership
Promise, exciting new displays and the REM- Fit brand stores.” Over the years, Protect-A-Bed has main- tained its commitment to maximizing its re- tail partners’ sales by customizing each top- of-bed program to align with their unique business goals. With that promise in mind, Protect-A-Bed’s Grow the Retail Basket program delivers multi-level support across six key areas: Mar- keting, Product, Display, Training, Service and Trust. As a whole, this program allows retailers to maintain their own resources devoted to core areas of their business (such as mattress sales)—while Protect-A-Bed works to improve their incremental, top-of-bed sales. On aver- age, the company is able to help retailers in- crease their retail tickets by $200 through the addition of pillows, encasements, protectors and other sleep technology products. All of Protect-A-Bed’s products are sup- ported by traditional and digital marketing campaigns that are designed to drive traffic to retail stores. The company also helps promote education and conversion through award-win- ning in-store displays, signage and videos that are tailored to the retailer’s target audience.
44 Sleep Retailer / Summer 2018
Protect-A-Bed offers this same level of per- sonalization through its training team, the larg- est in the top-of-bed category. More than just providing key product information, the training department customizes their approach to align with the retailer’s goals, developing and de- livering materials that support the growth of sales for the entire bedding system. From stra- tegic planning sessions and product launches to one-on-one store support and customized e-learning programs, the training team is ded- icated to delivering results. Renowned for its customer service, Protect-A-Bed also main- tains a 200,000 square foot warehouse with rapid drop-ship capabilities to provide greater efficiency to its retail partners.
Of course, these benefits are only as suc- cessful as the products they support. Protect- A-bed is recognized as a worldwide leader in mattress protection innovation—with acco- lades and certifications from the Food and Drug Administration, the Asthma and Allergy Foundation of America, Good Housekeeping and a number of international design awards. Longtime pioneers of the accessories cate- gory, Protect-A-Bed continues to push the envelope of
innovation. While initially fo-
cused on protection products, the company has steadily expanded its product offerings to include a full assortment of top-of-bed necessities. With patented technologies and third-party testing endorsements, the Pro- tect-A-Bed portfolio delivers valuable bene- fits and compelling sales stories.
In 2014, the company introduced REM- fit: a new sleep and healthy lifestyle brand. With a greater focus on the benefits of sleep, REM-Fit delivers advanced sleep technolo- gy across all of its pillow, mattress and bed- ding offerings. The hallmark of the REM-Fit brand is ZEEQ, a first-of-its-kind pillow that integrates state-of-the-art technology to go above and beyond traditional expectations. In addition to offering wireless speakers, ZEEQ is able to track sleep metrics like motion and snoring volume—and deliver key features like a sleep timer, smart alarm and snore-alert vi- bration. And all of these benefits are pack- aged inside a supremely comfortable pillow. The company introduced the high-tech pillow in 2016 on Kickstarter—and quickly raised $400K. ZEEQ was a featured product at the following Consumer Electronics Show, where it won a CES Award. Instead of resting on these laurels, the company has continued to optimize and improve the ZEEQ to better meet consumer expectations. Today, ZEEQ integrates with smart home devices through IFTTT and Alexa, which allows users to auto- mate many of their pre- and post-sleep activ- ities—delivering an exciting sleep solution to the increasingly connected consumer base. “One of the areas that we see tremendous opportunity is in technology and sleep,” said Warrick Bell, VP of Product Development and Marketing. “As technology continues to become more a part of everyday life, it is es- sential for bedding brands to take part in this
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