How Companies Are Helping Us Sleep Better

Most people spend about a third of their lives in bed, but too many of us aren’t getting good quality sleep. A series of products promise to rectify this, by bringing tech to our everyday nighttime products in a bid for better “sleep fitness.” “Sleep is akin to a performance-enhancing drug,” says Dr. Philip Gehrman, psychiatry professor at the University of Pennsylvania. He defines sleep fitness as “the extent to which we are getting sufficient quantity and quality of sleep to be energized and functioning at peak levels during the day.” Sleep fitness is becoming a high-priority item for most individuals—especially as Covid-19 studies point to a lack of sleep as increasing the risk of the virus. Demand is also growing for these products. In the U.S. alone, 50 to 70 million adults suffer from a sleep disorder, according to the American Sleep Association. We’re “a very sleep-deprived society,” said Dr. David Rapoport, a professor of medicine and pulmonary disease at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. The sleep fitness market emerges In 2019, Michigan State University carried out one of the most significant sleep studies to date, showing that sleep-deprived people lack the capacity to focus on tasks, leading to a decrease in productivity and increased conflict and safety risks. On the other hand, being “sleep fit” makes people “sharper, faster, less likely to be depressed, less argumentative and able to perform both physically and mentally better,” said Dr. Rapoport. The sleep-focused vertical has seen new products in recent years, including bedding, sleepwear and supplements. But now, brands like Eight Sleep are stepping in with a new type of offering to address poor-quality sleep: Products that marry technology, data, and daily-use items (in their case, mattresses) to help users achieve top levels of sleep fitness. “Where traditional bedding retailers tended to focus narrowly on selling mattresses, astute companies are now focussing on the much larger and more lucrative opportunity to treat sleep as an essential aspect of good health,” said retail analyst Doug Stephen. Making a bed for the 21st century For Eight Sleep, this concept is brought into service with the pod, the first bed created to help individuals optimize their sleep fitness. The mattress works in tandem with the company’s proprietary app to provide actionable, measurable and achievable insights around sleep health, patterns and performance. The pod does more than track data for user insights, however. Its patented AI and machine-learning technology adjusts the mattress temperature to optimize sleep conditions best-suited for the individual user. Early-case studies indicate this simple adaptation increases the speed at which users fall asleep by as much as 32%. The sensors built into the mattress surface are responsible for tracking information like biometrics and sleep stages. The data, along with other factors such as sleep duration, time to fall asleep, time to leave bed, and bedtime/wake up time consistency, is then used to compute an Eight Sleep fitness score, which users can monitor and track through the app. Sleep fitness readiness Eight Sleep isn’t the only company working to get ahead of this particular trend. Another brand advocating for sleep fitness is Hatch. Their roster of products provides users with techniques to wake up and sleep at the same time. Its Restore offering, for instance, offers audio-based meditations and soundscapes, and has an accompanying app that helps users establish and maintain a regular, consistent sleep routine. Expanding the sleep fitness target audience Studies show how light affects a person’s body clock. By introducing light as part of the morning wake-up experience, the brain releases a hormone called cortisol, which tells the brain to makes a smoother transition from sleep to wakefulness. Early this year, Hatch also released the Rest Mini, a smart all-in-one nighttime companion for young children, which doubles as an affordable, practical solution for parents struggling to get their children to sleep. Looking at the implications of products like these within this emerging vertical, one thing seems clear: With global wellness trends becoming more ubiquitous, brands catering to sleep fitness are likely to flourish. This may be the next frontier within the ever-growing health and wellness space. Disclosure: Product samples from Eight Sleep and Hatch were made available to the writer as part of the research process for this article. This Campaign by Sheba Wants to Help Put Cat Lovers Back to Sleep

Health and Wellness

How Bedding Companies Are Marketing Better Sleep

The rest-focused category has grown in recent years

Kaleigh Moore

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Kaleigh Moore