As health and wellness becomes a central topic in the mattress industry, there’s a need for new and innovative sleep tech to help address consumer needs.
Sleep and training experts Keith Messenger and Andrew Carrington, better known as Sleep Nerdz, are taking a unique approach to sleep tech with ZenRing, its new sleep-tracking smart ring
This isn’t the Sleep Nerdz’s first foray into sleep tech. As Bedding News Now has covered, the duo previously joined forces with sleep scientist Dr. Snooze, created an app that helps track sleep and other health metrics, and debuted a smart bed at the winter 2023 Las Vegas Market.
However, technology is an ever-changing game, and the Nerdz realized they needed to pivot in order to fill the need of consumers.
This led to the smart mattress being turned into a smart topper that offers features like a sleep report after tracking a person’s movements through the night or an SOS button that screams “help” if a person falls out of bed.
That technology became half of the equation, with the ZenRing filling the other half.
Smart rings are becoming increasingly popular for their ability to help manage health and wellness. With its 24/7 health tracking capabilities, ZenRing can monitor important metrics such as heart rate, body temperature, SpO2 and heart rate variability.
But even more than just monitoring the quality of sleep, it helps people understand their body’s readiness for the day ahead. By analyzing your sleep patterns and HRV from previous days, ZenRing provides users with a readiness score that reflects your energy level for the day.
“Sleep Nerdz has always been on a mission to improve people’s lives through sleep, but we realized education was not quite enough,” says Carrington. “After six days, the AI learning knows your heart rate variability and can calculate things like how much stress you’re under throughout the day. And now retailers have a tool on the floor to show people and ask them how they’re sleeping. You’d be amazed at the things we’ve discovered from the ring — like people falling asleep anywhere or waking up three times a night to use the bathroom.”
While companies like Oura are hitting big-box stores, Sleep Nerdz is offering this technology to furniture and mattress retailers with 24 educational lessons that can help them sell more. They now also have an East Coast and West Coast director of sales to aid retailers in bringing this technology into their stores.
“We offer the lessons and now retailers are also able to sell the ring, which makes the sales process easier,” Carrington says. “‘How are you currently tracking your sleep?’ — what a great quality question to ask somebody. Our thing has always been how we can push the envelope. Manufacturers have been pushing this for years, and we didn’t want to compete against companies like Stearns & Foster or Tempur because we can work in tandem with them.”
The ZenRing is a unique way to offer both consumers and retailers education and value when it comes to sleep health, but the Sleep Nerdz have made clear this is only the beginning. They plan to continue improving the ring based on feedback from users while also offering retailers a new tool they can use to help them sell more.
