Sleep plays an important role in our health, yet many people sleep on worn out hollow fiber pillows resulting in a poor night’s rest, a sore neck and even back pain. Memory foam is a material that softens in reaction to body heat, allowing it to mold to a warm body ensuring a good night’s rest. Make and sell your own memory foam pillows.
The market
There are essentially two types of memory foam pillows on the market and they are mainly expensively made by larger manufacturers, there is a space in this market for a lower cost quality pillow by taking advantage of memory foam offcuts from mattresses and other manufactures that use this material.
The types of pillows in this market are the full pillow in which the entire pillow is made up of a solid piece of memory foam, this is the most expensive pillow of the two and will cost much more to make.
The other one is the “memory foam chip pillow” this is made up of offcut pieces or chips (also known as shredded memory foam, memory foam crumb or memory foam pellets) of memory foam, it is made from the waste memory foam that is left behind after cutting a larger piece and has been cut into smaller chips or been shredded, kind of like the offcut foam you see in teddy bears. This is the one I will be looking at as it will allow you to get started with less capital and be able to sell the pillow cheap enough to get into the game.
Memory foam offcuts
What you need to get started
The components that make up the pillow is the foam inner and the material outer or cover (not to be confused with the pillow case). The outer material should be something strong but breathable (cotton or polyester). The memory foam is then put into the material and stitched close (or made into a removable zippered cover). While this can be outsourced if you don’t have any sewing skills or a sewing machine it requires little skill to sew close a pillow (see resources below). You can also make a zippered pillow case to hold the memory foam filling. The material for the cover is widely available. The most important thing is to get a constant supply of memory foam offcuts. Cast your net as wide as you can: foam manufactures, bed manufactures, chair manufactures etc.
Marketing the business
You should try to get into a retail store or at least sell via resellers so you can move volume. But even if you have a stall somewhere, people may not be in the market of a pillow but once they feel memory foam they will likely buy it. It is worlds apart compared to the standard hollow fiber pillows which lose its shape after a few weeks.
More Information
Easy-to-Sew Pillows
How to Make a Pillow
How to Make A Pillow Easy (YouTube Video)
Make a pillow with zip cover on YouTube
Image credits: Linenspa, Yunjie
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