Tag Archives: product differentiation

How Do You Turn Sheets from a Commodity to a Cost Saving Product?

By Denise Harrison 

Before leaving a commodity or price sensitive segment of your business you should ask: is there any way we can add value to our products and services so that customers will pay a premium?  To do this, you must understand what your customers’ needs and preferences truly are and what you can do to add/change your products and services.

Bed sheets: A price sensitive product – how can you differentiate?

Standard Textile was faced with this dilemma – in particular, hotels and hospitals kept going with the vendor with the lowest price.  How could they break the cycle?

Hospitals:

What are the key concerns that hospitals face as regulations increase and hospitals are graded on their healthcare outcomes?  One of the issues that continues to plague hospital patients are bed sores.  How can sheets help prevent bed sores?  The team at Standard Textile aimed to find out.  Here is what they found:  bed sores fester when there is a great deal of moisture and heat generated by the patient’s body.  Once a sore begins to form is further irritated by the friction generated by moving around in a hospital bed.  Standard Textile help resolve this by developing sheets that were cleaner, dryer and smoother.

Bed sores? Ugh! Bed sores impact 2.5 million patients annually and incur $9-11.5 billion/year in health care costs.  The National Pressure Advisory Panel Guidelines: “Consider using a silk like fabric instead of cotton or cotton blend to reduce shear and friction”.

The hospital bed problem:

  • Moisture associated skin damage
  • Excessive moisture and odor
  • Patients that are difficult to move and position

Standard Textile’s solution was DermaTherapy®, sheets that are FDA-approved for atopic dermatitis (bed sores).  These sheets help control moisture, friction and shear.

Now hospitals desiring to lower bed sore occurrences, flock to the Standard Textile sheets to lower the incidence of bed sores, thereby raising their patient outcomes scores and lowering overall system costs.

Hotels:

Over the years, hotels have used bed and bedding materials to differentiate their brands, but what could Standard Textile do to further optimize the hospitality industry’s operating costs? Here is what they found:

  • Hotel’s wash new sheets before they are used for the first time
  • They wanted premium but durable towels that were not only soft, but absorbent
  • Bedcovers – now washed, but how can we get the covers back on the beds after washing without ironing, but still have them look good?

Standard Textile solutions included:

  • Room Ready for You®; sheets that arrive already washed and ready for use
  • Towels that are more absorbent, durable and soft using patented weaving technology
  • Cumulus® Bedcovers: waffle-design bed covers that are room-ready after washing (Cumulus®)

How does Standard Textile turn typically price-sensitive products into value added products? In short, the company works to truly understand customer issues, and then leverages its technical competencies in weaving, textile materials and laundering, to develop products and services that significantly lower their customers operating costs.

What are you doing to lower your customers’ operating costs and thereby raising the value (and potentially, the price) of your formerly price sensitive product?  A true understanding of the issues that your customers face will help you develop products and services that provide more value to your customers’ processes.

If you have questions about turning your price sensitive product into a value-added product, please contact:  Denise Harrison, harrison@thestratplan.com, 910-763-5194.

(c) Spex, Inc., Wilmington, NC, 2018