Get Sleep Savvy | Puffy SVP of Operations and Distribution Bill Huertas on the Future of Sleep Retail

Join Kathryn Greene, senior editor at Sleep Savvy Magazine, in an exciting interview with Bill Huertas from Puffy. Discover Puffy’s journey from foam to hybrid mattresses and their expansion into brick-and-mortar stores. Get a sneak peek at their premium Diamond bed and learn how they’re navigating the ever-changing mattress market. Stay informed and get sleep savvy with this insightful conversation!

Transcript

Kathryn Greene
Hi, I’m Kathryn Greene. I’m senior editor at Sleep Savvy Magazine. I’m here today on location in the Puffy Showroom with Bill Huertas. And this is an exciting day because we are filming the very first video in our Get Sleep Savvy video series. Bill, thank you so much for joining us today.

Bill Huertas
My pleasure.

Kathryn Greene
Tell us about Puffy.

Bill Huertas
So Puffy is an e-commerce brand that started back in 2016 and, about seven years ago, started out as a foam-only manufacturer. Since then, we’ve seen the business change, the Market has changed with it, and hybrids have become much more important. So, about four years ago, we transitioned into a hybrid product. So now we offer both foam and hybrid as part of our assortment.

And so far, things are going really well.

Kathryn Greene
Yeah, and you have some exciting new openings. Can you tell us a little bit about that, your stores and your strategy?

Bill Huertas
Yeah, we came to Market last year and decided to go back to the brick-and-mortar, and we realized that the synergies between e-commerce and brick-and-mortar kind of start out a little tough. I don’t think brick-and-mortar embraced the situation with e-commerce. But as time progresses, we think we’ve seen that, and now we know that there are a lot of e-commerce brands that have gone into brick-and-mortar.

So we’re doing the same thing. We hired a gentleman last year who has a lot of industry experience to head up our program with retail brick-and-mortar. We’ve done great expansion so far, seeing consistent growth at Market here. We’ve seen a lot of attention being put on us. We’ve seen retailers who have bought into our program.

It’s a short, concise program that is good for retailers. So it’s easy for them to understand it, easy for them to explain to the RSAs and then, of course, easy to explain to a customer. So we’ve had great success so far and plan to continue that.

Kathryn Greene
That’s amazing. Congratulations. And what kind of launches do you have that we can look forward to?

Bill Huertas
So interesting, the Diamond this year we teased a little bit last Market got some great feedback from our retailers. We made some changes to it. So it’s a bed that includes premium wool fibers in the top to help maintain microclimate, including visco and latex, which are the premium materials to reduce pressure and improve sleep. So we think we’ve got a great look, a great product that customers can buy into and perform well for them at their house and get us into the luxury market.

Kathryn Greene
You know, and I have to say I had the pleasure of trying it out, and it was quite comfortable.

Bill Huertas
We like to hear that. We’ve had great feedback from retailers and suppliers that have been in as well. So we’re very pleased with the way it came out and looking forward to it being marketed very soon.

Kathryn Greene
I know there’s been a little bit of a downturn. How are you managing, and how have things been the past few years?

Bill Huertas
So I think everybody saw the spike in COVID, and demand went crazy and then last year, everyone saw demand kind of fall off a little bit. What we’ve seen the last few months is a nice steady increase back in demand, both on our e-commerce side and our brick-and-mortar side, which is relatively new to us. So it’s encouraging to see.

Bill Huertas
I think everybody’s seen that across the board, which for the industry is great.

Kathryn Greene
Thank you so much for joining us today and helping us get sleep savvy.

Bill Huertas
It’s always nice to be first.