The Mattress MakersThe Salots started The Sleep Company with a clear vision: to make sleep better

Harshil Salot and his wife Priyanka Salot just entered parenthood and were on the lookout to get the best mattress that would help them sleep better in order for them to be at their best for our son. As a consequence, the IIM graduates ended up traveling across the world in search for the next frontier in the comfort solutions space. "Our hard work paid off when we met with ex-DRDO material scientist Dr. Tripathi who we worked with to create our patented SmartGRID technology - and as they say, the rest is history," Harshil Salot says, leading them to develop the idea behind The Sleep Company.

The Sleep Company was established in 2019 with the goal of changing the way people sleep and sit through cutting-edge technology. As a digitally-native company, Salots and their team utilized an effective combination of the digital marketplace and their website to augment the reach as well as awareness of their brand, which worked tremendously over the last few years.

When it comes to taking the D2C route there were many factors that the co-founders considered. The COVID-19 pandemic not only changed the way we all live and work, but it completely reshaped consumer behaviour. "It caused consumers to form new habits— augmenting the quicker adoption of digital channels and accelerating social and online shopping trends that have been on the rise for years. For brands, D2C offers direct consumer interaction - Owning the entire customer relationship and leveraging all data to create unique, personalized, more efficient, engagement as well as higher profit margin by eliminating intermediaries. D2C has opened up brands to a wider audience base with customers coming from tier 2 and 3 cities as well as in metros who have an average to a high level of comfort buying from a new brand online," Salot commented.

Salot further asserts that the pandemic years have helped create a significant shift in consumer perception when it comes to lifestyle products that offer a very specific health-related value proposition. Customers have become more aware of the attainable quality of products that are just a few well-researched reviews away, and what they are will now demanding is better innovation that fulfils very specific needs and customization as well as enhanced brand engagement at every step of the customer journey.

"For the D2C ecosystem, brands that are able to offer the most engaging customer experience, with products that have a proven value addition and are unwavering in their delivery of both will be the ultimate deciding factor of success in the future. We want to keep building on our D2C market by connecting with the users through multiple channels, including social media as well. We have been driving the conversation on the importance of sleep and engaging with the targeted consumers through various touchpoints. In fact, more than 30 percent of our leads come from social media," he said.