PJS THAT EASE NIGHT SWEATS FILLING SLEEPWARE NICHE
High-tech, fashionable and poised for global growth
If you’ve thrashed your way through night sweats, you know what discomfort is: lying in bed feeling hot and closed-in, kicking off the covers, shifting and turning in an effort to cool off. Most often associated with women going through menopause, night sweats can also be related to various medications, infections, hormone or cancer treatments.
No one enduring these conditions deserves to toss and turn all night. When Calgary fashion executive Lara Little saw her sister going through night sweats after being diagnosed with breast cancer, she saw a unique opportunity. She had long hoped to start a business, and now she had an angle: create fashionable pyjamas that would wick away perspiration just like top athletic gear.
Fortunately, as the manager responsible for the womenswear line at Mark’s Work Wearhouse, she had VIP access to innovative suppliers and fabrics. Today, Little’s business, Lusomé, combines her fashion sense and leading-edge technology to relieve the discomfort of women across North America. And this month, to keep ahead of rivals, she is introducing an advanced product line, and gearing up to go global.
“Eighty per cent of women suffer night sweats at some point,” Little says. “We get so many letters from customers whose lives we’ve changed. This is a dream job.”
But a real dream job would probably pay a salary. Little has gone without since 2012, when she quit her job at Mark’s. She still prefers to reinvest in Lusomé to support future growth. “I had been in the corporate world,” she says. “They’re concerned mainly about shareholder value. I wanted to be back where I loved, working with products that help customers.”
Still, when you get the productbenefit right, the payoff can be huge. With this month’s introduction of Lusomé’s new fabric, sales are expected to triple last year’s. And with the number of U.S. retailers set to double over the next year, Little expects 2017 sales to triple again.
“We’ve done a lot of financial modelling and market-share calculations,” she says. “Extrapolating from our achievements in Canada, we are headed to a $200-million company.”
Do corporate types have the chops to be growth entrepreneurs? Little could be a case study. She’s leveraged all the skills she learned in big business, starting as a buyer for Eaton’s. When she quit her job she took a month to write a business plan. She reached out to a trusted textile mill in Asia to develop the dual-layer fabric she needed, and then enlisted a manufacturer she’d known for 20 years to produce it.
Little has used her marketing skills to create a purpose for her business (to bring people comfort in a beautiful way) and a brand: “Lusomé” is an old Scottish word meaning desirable. Little put an accent on the “e” just for style. She enlisted a technical designer she knew in Winnipeg to develop functionality and hired a creative director in the U.S. to produce an elegant look. “The design is super-important to me,” she says. “We don’t want granny jams.”
But innovation doesn’t always sell. “Sometimes it felt like pushing water uphill,” Little says. “We’re stuck between fashion and tech. We’re not sexy like Chanel, but we’re not a technical brand like Nike or Patagonia.”
Persistence, however, pays off. Contacting small retailers across Canada, Little handed out hightech T-shirts to store employees to demonstrate the comfort and style of her products. By 2014, her first year of production, she had signed up 40 retailers, ranging from stylish sleep shops to hospital gift shops. With prices ranging from $58 for a top to $98 for a long chemise, Lusomé’s product have a lot of explaining to do, which is why Little favours service-oriented boutiques.
This year, Lusomé expects to pass $1 million in revenue, with 125 retail partners — half of them now in the U.S — expected to be onside by the holiday season. Meanwhile, Lusomé’s website generates 60 per cent of sales, a percentage Little hopes will grow even as her retail network expands.
So far, Lusomé has remained a home-based business for all five employees. But things are starting to change. Little has just hired her first CFO, an experienced fashion executive who will also oversee business operations, and is now looking at office space.
With knock-off competitors now targeting Lusomé, Little worked with her supplier to develop a new fabric, dubbed Xirotex, said to be 10 times better than its competitors at wicking away moisture. And other innovations keep coming. Lusomé’s new line includes a new colour (dusk), and its first men’s pyjamas. Both developments delight Sheila Connell, owner of Shades of Sleep, a Calgary bedding boutique that was one of Lusomé’s first retailers. “I have a waiting list of people who already have this product but want it in a different colour,” she says. As for the guys’ line, she adds, “I’ve had men asking for this for two years.”
According to Little, it’s all part of the plan. “We have a five-year strategic plan for global expansion,” she says. That includes diversification into lingerie, sports bras and underwear, and working with distributors to expand into the U.K., India and China. Oddly enough, one potential partner tried to copy Lusomé’s products. But when Little saw a big order going out to a rival business, she intercepted the shipment and called the company — to suggest that partnering up might make more sense. “They love what we’re doing,” she says. “And that’s the beauty of a small business — the ability to be right on top of things that are happening.”
We get so many letters from customers whose lives we’ve changed. This is a dream job.