Lee Hinshaw on Fox News
Kingsdown Senior Vice President of Global Brand Management Lee Hinshaw being interviewed earlier this week on Fox News told Tracy Byrnes that the greatest challenge faced by the sleep products industry was not competition from other brands, but rather energy drinks that prop consumers up during the day and drugs that knock people out at night. Neither, he said, addresses the critical issues of helping consumers get a good and restorative night’s sleep.
“To look at just the mattress industry as competition would be a small group,” said Hinshaw, who appeared live for nearly eight minutes on the afternoon program to talk about Kingsdown global growth. “Drug and energy drink companies sell short-term solutions for a problem consumers have. They’re not sleeping well so they're taking sleep aids at night and pumping themselves up with energy drinks during the day. We need to spend time as an industry not competing against ourselves, but getting consumers to realize that if they have the right bed/sleep system, they will get a good night’s sleep and not need the medicate themselves for rest.”
Hinshaw explained that Kingsdown targets these consumers through “mattress education” with research from the Sleep to Live Institute and technology such as their new bedMATCH diagnostic program. “The interesting thing about a better night's sleep is that you only recognize if you've had one depending on how you feel the next day,” said Hinshaw.
bedMATCH uses cutting edge technology and information from new sleep research to change the way people shop for and select their mattress. Product features and comfort feels from multiple manufacturers are programmed into each bedMATCH machine. Shoppers answer some basic questions at an in-store kiosk, lay down on a diagnostic mattress to have their measurements taken and the bedMATCH system recommends potential mattresses to be rest-tested. The culmination of over 15 years of research and development and 6 million profiles, the bedMATCH system uses 18 statistical measurements and over 1,000 calculations to assist the consumer in determining the best mattress and pillow options for their body type.
About Kingsdown: Kingsdown, Inc. founded in 1904 and headquartered in Mebane, North Carolina, USA is a manufacturer of premium mattress systems serving leading retailers across the United States and in more than 20 countries. Each product is manufactured using handcrafted techniques combined with state‐of‐the‐art research, materials and equipment. Research and development, training and distribution facilities, as well as two manufacturing facilities, are also headquartered in Mebane. International offices are located in Bangkok, Thailand, and Tokyo, Japan. Additional manufacturing and distribution centers are located in Winchester, VA; Muskogee, OK; Lakeland, FL; Knoxville, TN; Stockton, CA; Toronto, Calgary, and Vancouver, Canada; Derby, United Kingdom; Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia; Istanbul, Turkey; Melbourne, Brisbane and Perth, Australia. For more information, visit www.kingsdown.com.