Brands should dare to zig when others zag

“The only way for a scale-up to suc­ceed is if it zigs when oth­er peo­ple zag. Fail­ure is def­i­nite­ly doing what every­one else is doing. Because we can­not do that as well,” says Cheryl Calver­ley, CEO of sleep well­ness brand and mat­tress pur­vey­or Eve Sleep. Her task is doing just that, get­ting a pop­u­lar, grow­ing brand – yet one that is still in the red – to achieve suc­cess in the long term. 

One of the ways Eve is try­ing to do that is by work­ing dif­fer­ent­ly. Instead of try­ing to out­pace the com­pe­ti­tion in terms of speed or price or logis­tics, it is chang­ing the sleep game by focus­ing on brand. Brand­ing, Calver­ley says, plays a mod­er­ate­ly lit­tle role in people’s rela­tion­ship with their mat­tress­es. 

But, sleep, on the oth­er hand, can be influ­enced fur­ther by a brand beyond just what mat­tress is on the bed. “There­fore, the role brands can play is real­ly frickin’ high,” she says. Instead of talk­ing about mat­tress­es, Eve is talk­ing about great morn­ings and great nights. It’s putting sleep first, and there­by con­nect­ing with con­sumers about what they’re real­ly after when shop­ping for a mat­tress: a good night’s sleep. This, Calver­ley says, “becomes a com­mer­cial­ly pow­er­ful dif­fer­en­tia­tor.”

Added to that is the chang­ing role of prod­uct-dri­ven think­ing with­in com­pa­nies. Calver­ley points to the ear­ly days of the 20th cen­tu­ry when brands were prod­uct-led. That swift­ly changed in the mid­dle and lat­ter half of the cen­tu­ry to focus more on oper­a­tions and finan­cial per­for­mance. But now, Calver­ley pre­dicts “a return to great prod­ucts that meet con­sumer needs real­ly well. That’s what’s going to dri­ve suc­cess­ful busi­ness­es.” That’s a boon to Eve Sleep then, as Calverley’s back­ground is in mar­ket­ing for the likes of Birds Eye, Unilever and the AA. 

While not an unusu­al back­ground for a cor­po­rate leader, mar­ket­ing isn’t quite the typ­i­cal path to the big chair. 

“I am bru­tal­ly trans­par­ent,” Calver­ley says of her approach to lead­er­ship. “Which is good and bad.” Much like her expe­ri­ence at Eve, in fact. When she first joined, the cul­ture was what might be expect­ed of a start­up. Loss­es were ram­pant, and peo­ple were lit­er­al­ly skate­board­ing around the build­ing. 

“The cul­ture change has been vast, and under­ly­ing that was a very low con­fi­dence lev­el across the team,” she says. She has focused on chang­ing that. But, as she points out: “That’s real­ly bloody hard because we’re a scale-up,” mean­ing the lev­els of uncer­tain­ty in the busi­ness are unlike­ly to change. 

Stay­ing strong through­out that can be dif­fi­cult and lone­ly, though, and Calver­ley relies on her chair­man and busi­ness lead­ers in dif­fer­ent organ­i­sa­tions as her sup­port sys­tem. 

But, the view from the top can be an empow­er­ing notion, as well. Retail – and ecom­merce in par­tic­u­lar – may be due to change dras­ti­cal­ly as a result of the pan­dem­ic, with infla­tion, reces­sion and any num­ber of oth­er macro trends affect­ing con­sump­tion today and in the near future. 

Calver­ley says: “Great ecom­merce is not repli­cat­ing real­ly effi­cient retail. The oppor­tu­ni­ty in ecom­merce is to cre­ate retail at scale dig­i­tal­ly.” She says many ecom­merce brands have focused on mak­ing the online shop­ping expe­ri­ence as close to that of the in-store expe­ri­ence as pos­si­ble. But that ignores some of the pow­er of dig­i­tal, where inter­ac­tiv­i­ty, con­tent and per­son­al­i­sa­tion can play a role in con­nect­ing con­sumers with the brand and prod­uct. 

The next few years might prove to be “one of the biggest resets we have ever seen.” Brands build­ing up their pur­pose cred­its, but with­out a sol­id foun­da­tion, may find them­selves crum­bling. Like­wise, those with­out atten­tion to ser­vice and val­ue will strug­gle to com­pete. “A lot of brands are get­ting found out,” says Calver­ley. “I think you will see a huge clear out and what you’ll find in the mid­dle is a core of well-run brands that give a great cus­tomer expe­ri­ence with great prod­ucts. But it’s going to be a blood­bath.”

The future may prove rocky for retail­ers, but at the very least, a decent night’s sleep is becom­ing a more acces­si­ble dream.