By Aimee Chanthadavong
Bed linen brand Sheridan is creating an Australian first home retail concept with the launch of its new range, POP by Sheridan.
With an aim of challenging its own conservative image in the market, its POP range is underpinned by a ‘create your own bed’ digital concept that encourages customers to mix and match individual sheets, pillowcases and quilt covers, giving them the freedom to create their own personalised look.
The range is made up of 40 different prints of bold colours and graphics, which are sold separately, unlike Sheridan’s current range of bed linen, that are sold in sets and the look is defined by Sheridan. It will be updated with new designs every six to eight weeks.
Paul Gould, general manager of Sheridan told Retailbiz that it’s a new retail concept for Sheridan.
“It takes what we call ‘bricks and clicks’ and we’re really trying to integrate new technology into this category and look at how we use them and what we have is a new product range that runs on a complete mix and match concept,” he said.
“So nobody is going tell the customer what the look is so you create your own look. The whole marketing line for this program is ‘start playing and create your own bed’.
“We’ve done a lot to expand our product offer we’re now going a little broader and less conservative than it’s always been and consumers are still getting use to it. I think generally people think the Sheridan brand as great quality but slightly conservative, but this range will unlock a new space for us.”
According to Gould, the Sheridan core brand currently competes in the marketplace worth about $255 million at wholesale.
“By introducing pop we believe we’d be expanding that we’d be competing in the market worth $425 million because we’ve brought a newer price point in the market for Sheridan,” he said.
POP, which will be of a cotton and polyester blend, will be offered at a lower price point than its existing range.
“We’ve purposely separated these products, we’ve created what we call ‘cotton reach for easy care product’ so it’s a cotton poly blend. It’s really easy to care for because cotton requires a lot of ironing and some customers don’t like that and we think the attitude of this customer is they want things easy,” Gould said.
As part of the new range, Sheridan will remove beds from the department and will instead offer customers an interactive way in designing their beds. Large touch screens will be in-store allowing customers to turn, twist and view a 3D model of a bed that will display their selections.
Also, unlike a traditional bed linen on display, there will be no product sitting out. So the products displayed on the wall, will be stacked inside a cupboard, taking on a very small footprint in-store.
“Traditionally in the store you’d have the different parts of the set on display and it’d go in single, double, king and they all take up huge amounts of space. So by storing it this way into fixtures, we have a huge density of stock like the return per square metre will be 50 per cent better than the average department delivers,” Gould said.
The new concept will have three trial sites in Sydney – David Jones and Myer in Sydney CBD and Myer in Castle Hill.
“These will be the first three POP concessions and effectively this palette card gives you your whole line and put together your own look,” he said.
An online store that will offer the same technological interaction will launch in early December.