Even as the founder and CEO of a startup business, Gary Goldberg doesn’t have any problems sleeping at night. And thanks to his company, CleanBrands LLC, neither do his customers.
CleanBrands makes covers for pillows, comforters, mattresses and box springs that protect people from microscopic fiends – such as dust mites and pollen – that can make a good night’s sleep elusive, and even necessitate a trip to the doctor.
Goldberg knows this from personal experience. In 2004, his 8-year-old son was having difficulties breathing at night, and he was diagnosed with allergies to dust mites.
Over the course of several nights in the emergency room, his son’s pediatrician explained the severity and magnitude of the problem, and the enormous cost it presents to hospitals around the country. The doctor challenged him personally, as a textiles manufacturer, to create an encasement product that would deliver on its promise to protect people from allergens.
If the numbers are any indication, Goldberg may be onto something. Leading health care organizations report that one in five Americans – more than 60 million people – suffers from asthma and allergies, and diagnoses have risen more than 158 percent in the last two decades.
Asthma is the fourth-leading cause of workplace absenteeism, costing more than $3 billion annually in lost productivity.
The National Institutes of Health recommends bedding encasements – like those made by CleanBrands – as part of a multi-level approach to helping reduce exposure to allergens.
It helps that Goldberg grew up in the textile business, working at Duro Industries, a company his grandfather started 60 years ago. After his father sold the business in 1997, the younger Goldberg started a new company that provides outsourced manufacturing, design, product development and other services, and soon acquired a business that produces performance outerwear.
This shop-floor pedigree gave him a keen eye for researching fabrics that might be up to the task – and scrutinizing what was already on the market. What he initially found was disappointing but not surprising: products that were too noisy or hot to be comfortable, and softer materials that were too flimsy, or simply ineffective.
Said Goldberg, “I began to understand that a new way of thinking needed to be approached and that true market leadership would not be driven by serving up similar products we found in the marketplace.”
“I was forced to dismiss conventional thinking,” he added, “and engaged the process of discovery and analysis, which only further fueled my excitement in the project.”
Using his industry contacts, Goldberg began to develop a product that eliminated the weaknesses in his competitors’ offerings. After rigorous testing, Goldberg was ready to go to market. He initially targeted Bed, Bath and Beyond as a destination retailer for allergen-barrier bedding products and personally negotiated a 30-store test with a company buyer in the spring of last year. By last February, 800 stores were carrying CleanRest products, with Kohl’s, JC Penney, Sears and Target expected to follow suit.
Also aiding CleanBrands’ growth was a major investment by now co-owner Northbridge Equity Partners of Montreal.
One key to CleanBrands’ ability take innovative ideas from whiteboard to store shelves is that the entire company, especially its structure and culture, is built around innovation.
“CleanBrands LLC is in the business of protecting people first, and to that end, we encourage all of our employees to participate in the development and collaborative management of the business and its vision,” Goldberg said.
At the heart of CleanBrands is its New Product Development Team, which Goldberg himself leads. The team receives feedback from CleanRest’s sales, marketing and manufacturing teams, as well as its Preferred Physicians Network, a group of hundreds of independent physicians and medical advisers across the country.
CleanRest also relies on third-party organizations and laboratories that rigorously test and, ideally, validate its claims. It is the only company in its market sector to invite every consumer who purchases its product to participate in its product development process.
In its first year, CleanBrands sold roughly 50,000 pillow and mattress covers. With 35 million allergy sufferers in the United States alone, CleanRest has plenty of room to grow. And perhaps, at long last, parents will be able to bid good night confident that the bed bugs will really not bite. •
