Sleeping cool comes down to the science. That’s why luxury sheets provider Lusome invested in an extensive clinical research study with Harvard University’s Division of Sleep Medicine to learn about the science behind temperature regulation and its relationship to better sleep.
The women-focused company, which has been around since 2013, started as a women’s pajama brand that CEO Lara Smith created for her sister who was battling breast cancer.
“Her treatment protocol put her into early menopause, so she was through chemo and radiation and therapies that gave her night sweats, and she couldn’t sleep,” Smith explained. “I was trying to buy her pajamas to alleviate the sweating so she could get a good night’s sleep, and there really wasn’t anything that was not polyester-based that didn’t look like granny jammies.”
Smith left her corporate job and reached out to a couple of textile mills to help develop what she calls the best-performing luxury fabric that could deliver proven relief. After seeing success with the pajamas, she started manufacturing sheets, and the business was propelled from there.
The brand was featured in Oprah Magazine in early 2017 and has been ramping up its production since. Now, the company is looking for partners with brick-and-mortar retailers.
Lusome’s proprietary textile technology, Xirotex, prevents sweating and helps people sleep longer, wake less, and experience fewer nights of sleep.
As your body temperature rises during sleep, Xirotex actively absorbs excess heat and stores that energy within the fabric before your body begins to perspire. By helping maintain a more consistent sleep temperature, Lusome reduces overheating that can interrupt restorative sleep.
That was all found to be scientifically sound based on the recent clinical study with Harvard. Here are a few highlights:
- Average sleep duration increased by 26 minutes
- 69% of participants reported improved sleep quality
- Among those affected, 42% reported a reduced severity in night sweats
- 33% of participants eliminated night sweats entirely
Participants also reported increased alertness, happiness, energy levels and overall health, as well as maintaining a sense of calm throughout the study.
Since the research came out in January, Smith said the brand’s business has been transformed to the point where they are doubling and tripling sales of sheets every month. “We can’t keep it in stock,” Smith said.
“It’s a mic drop moment, and retailers are paying attention,” she continues. “The smart ones are paying attention because they need ways to differentiate. The markets that we’re slowly launching in have some exclusivity for a period of time. We also have results from data from a partnership with Kingsdown, our mattress partner, that shows mattress sales with Lusome drive incremental sales 19-40%. Our sales are up, but within retail, having Lusome as part of the sleep story has made a huge impact.”
Smith said some in the industry offer false promises and what she calls “science theater” when it comes to cooling products.
“We want to do it better than everyone else and have it really work,” she said. “Then we substantiate our claims, which then came to be the clinical trial we did with Harvard.”
She said that in the bedding industry, sheets are still looked at as an afterthought. However, she said Lusome has retail partners who have grown their businesses through these accessory add-ons.
If stores have a KPI that mandates RSAs to sell sheets as a percentage or an attachment rate, we see huge results and incremental volume. I think it’s hit and miss, but the general consensus isn’t positive on sheets.”
Regardless, Lusome is moving full speed ahead, and Smith said she’s excited for where the Harvard research will take the brand.
“We’re very focused on women’s health—that’s kind of the core DNA of the brand—and we mix science and emotion,” Smith said. Overheating at night, especially for women, is a significant health issue that has downstream life-or-death consequences in terms of heart events or the risk of Alzheimer’s and dementia. When the mattress industry embraces the opportunity of elevating their assortments to speak to women’s health, that’s the next foray into getting to know customers and serving them better.”
