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Changemaker Interview: John Replogle, CEO, Leesa Sleep

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If anyone has a pedigree as a top corporate social impact executive, it is John Replogle.  

Just look at how the former Harvard MBA and BCG consultant has spent his time since 2003:

2003 – 2006:  At Unilever, where as general manager of the skin care division he helped launch the iconic Dove Campaign for Real Beauty (which I’ve called one of the ten most influential cause campaigns.)

2006 – 2011: CEO of Burt’s Bees, the “Earth Friendly, Natural Personal Care Company, which he helped grow dramatically and sold to Clorox Company. 

2011 – 2017: CEO of the eco-friendly cleaning, paper and personal care products company Seventh Generation where he oversaw substantial expansion and sold to Unilever.

2017 to the present: Became a partner in One Better Ventures, a firm that advises and invests in high-growth, purpose-driven consumer goods companies including Leesa Sleep, a direct-to-consumer mattress company that gives a bed to a homeless child for every ten it sells, where he is now CEO.

Around the Thanksgiving holiday, Leesa underlined its commitment to ending child bedlessness in America by running two campaigns. From November 23 – 30, through the “1 Bedless Night” program, Leesa offered to donate a mattress to a child in need for every person who gave up their bed for one and shared their experience on Instagram.    On GivingTuesday, they offered to donate one bed for every bed sold.

I recently spoke with John about these efforts and more which led to this conversation (which has been lightly edited for length and clarity.)

Q: You’ve led a number of notable purpose-driven companies, but Leesa is the first one that has prominently featured a cause marketing offer along the lines of “buy this and we will give this.” Why have you taken this tack with Leesa?

Cause marketing is a tricky term as you know. It’s an issue of greenwashing. Cause needs to go way beyond marketing. I believe in purpose. I believe it’s the power at the center of all great organizations. At Leesa, our purpose is to end bedlessness.

About 1 in 4 kids in the United States has an issue with insecurity of food, insecurity of financial protection and, frankly, lack of a proper place to sleep. Sleep is so fundamental to the development of the brain and to the ability to focus in the classroom. What Leesa wants to do is to bring an end to bedlessness in children. It is estimated that 4 million children in the US go to bed each night without a bed. It’s horrific in a nation like ours where we have so much that there are so many children going to sleep each night without a bed.  

It’s a very tangible goal upon which we as an organization can make a difference….   We use business as a vehicle to solve that problem. The company was started with the premise that that is what we would do. The purpose is sown into the DNA of the company. We created a mechanism whereby we could afford to do that effectively. If we could sell 10 mattresses we could afford to donate one. We call it our 1 10 Program.

Q: How did your recent 1 Bedless Night and Giving Tuesday promotions work out?

We had great engagement and this will become an annual event. We committed to donating a bed for every person who spent a night without a bed during the week of November 23 – 30 and posted it to social media using the hashtag #1BedlessNight.    We well cleared our goal of 2,000 beds and should hit 4,000 when all the information comes in. My family did it, it was a bonding experience and we felt great about it. We hope that this really grows over time.

On GivingTuesday we did offer to donate one mattress for each one sold and had a few hundred customers purchase beds and saw an uplift in traffic, it had some impact. We got started, we learned a lot from this and we’re really pleased with the results and we want to build something much bigger.

Q: It’s impressive that you’ve donated about 40,000 beds over time, but you are very far from “wiping out” bedlessness and even with dramatic growth in sales that goal seems unattainable. How substantial do you consider Leesa’s impact?

We will be six years old in January and we’ve donated 40,000 beds so far. We think that is making a huge difference, that’s more than a million nights of better sleep per month so it’s great impact. It’s one percent of the problem, one percent of the issue.   

What I think we’ve done more than simply that metric is we’ve raised awareness of the issue. We’ve brought strong support to the partners we work with (Leesa works with a large network of nonprofit partners such as Thrive Arizona, The Green Chair Project in North Carolina and Covenant House in North Carolina).

Leesa is a Benefit Corp, one of the few B Corps in the sleep industry. We’re really pleased that others are now following suit. We are changing the industry we are operating in. Malouf, a big player based in Utah, has just certified as a B Corp.   Recently, Purple announced a program and a partnership to do good in their community. Casper is making strides on this front and frankly emulating a lot of what we’ve done. What we are trying to do is not simply solve the problem on our own.

Q: Buying a bed is a large considered purchase. How much do you believe consumers include the good that you do in their decision to buy a mattress from you?

Leesa are makers of good, that is the core of our brand. We make a really good product and do a lot of good in the world. Consumer actions and purchases are motivated often by three things: Functional, technical and emotional benefits. We focus a great deal on the functional and technical benefits of the beds that we build. We build the highest quality mattress we can in the United States at an approachable price and we know consumers love them. We receive great ratings. In fact, we have a net promoter score of 80. Consumers who discover Leesa, love Leesa.  

The sleep category is a highly commoditized category and so competing on functional and technical is not enough. We believe you have to go to the emotional as well.  And that is where our mission comes in. People love the idea that they bought a great bed, a great night’s sleep AND that they are doing some good with their purchase. That’s our secret sauce.

In the industry itself, it (doing good) is not a highly motivating factor – about fifth or sixth on the considered purchase criteria. They think about price and quality and things like that first. For the targeted consumer that Leesa goes after it rises to about third. So, if we can convince the consumer that they are getting a great mattress at a great price we “win” because the third criteria is “It does good.” We are pretty targeted.  There are about 60 million consumers for whom doing good rises up on their list. About 1 in 5 Americans prioritize that in their mattress purchase decision.

It’s a $16 billion-a-year category. When we started, there was no direct to consumer model. We were one of the first with a handful of others. That penetration rate was sort of like ivy. It slept, it crept and it leapt. Now 1 in 5 mattresses are bought online. And we fully expect – and industry analysts expect – that figure will double again in the next three to five years.

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