Who is Colin?

Meet Colin McIntosh, Founder of Sheets & Giggles!

About Sheets & Giggles

Sheets & Giggles is bed serious about the high-quality and sustainable bedding that they offer. Crafted from lyocell fabric and sourced from high-quality eucalyptus wood pulp, the company’s sheets, mattresses, and pillows are comfortable, breathable, and long-lasting. Not only does Sheets & Giggles provide the best bedding for its customers, it also gives back to the community, having donated to a handful of charities and outreach resources.

Colin’s Journey

Colin considers his company the Seinfeld of e-commerce brands. At first glance, Sheets & Giggles seems like a brand about nothing, but underneath the surface, the brand is about so much more.

He founded the brand in October 2017 and shipped the first box a year later. Bedsheets is a massive and highly fragmented market because there’s no brand loyalty, he explains, and when he entered the industry, there were no sustainable options for bedsheets.

Colin owned the domain for a while and was obsessed with the brand name. When he got laid off in September 2017, he found that there was no better time than the present to start his company. He took a leap of faith and created a crowdfunding campaign in May 2018, through which he raised $280,000. Six months later, Colin shipped the first order.

Crafting the Company

Colin bought his first mattress after graduating college years before Casper, the company that changed the bedding game, launched. He doesn’t like the lofty e-commerce brand missions. Simply put, the sheets his company sells are sustainably made and softer than cotton, and they use ingredients sourced from eucalyptus trees with less than 96% less water than cotton, no insecticides, and no microplastics. He has customers with chronic skin conditions who love the products, and hearing their stories is what Colin loves most about his company. 

The Sheets & Giggles Priorities

Colin hired the company’s first employee in February 2019, and the company operated for a year until COVID-19 hit. Then, the company transitioned to a remote setting, and they’ve been working remotely for four years. Additionally, the team shifted to a four-day work week a year ago to operate Monday through Thursday. This is a strategic and lifestyle advantage because the team can maintain a healthy work-life balance. 

Company Priorities

Colin does good things as an extension of running the business. He and the team have donated a quarter million dollars to charities like EarthJustice, St. Jude’s, Jax Fam Foundation, and more through his company. Sheet & Giggles has also planted trees, and Colin enjoys giving back to the community.

The company primarily employs people based in the US and works with formerly incarcerated people to produce pillows. Those employees make a living wage of $17 an hour. Colin loves hearing their stories and learning more about them. 

The US has both the highest prison and recidivism rates in the world, and through Sheets & Giggles, Colin wants to be a part of the solution and help previously incarcerated people rehabilitate themselves and change their lives for the better.

The CX Philosophy at Sheets & Giggles

The Sheets & Giggles team follows the golden rule—treat people the way the team wants to be treated by other businesses. This means responding to emails within 24 hours and answering phone calls swiftly. When the company makes mistakes, the team apologizes by giving customers $5-10 Amazon gift cards. The company also does free pizza giveaways once a month, where they’ll choose a random person who comments on their Instagram post. 

Colin explains that small things go a long way, and he’s a big fan of surprise and delight. Every sheet set comes with a sleeping mask and is stored in a knapsack that customers can wear on their backs for easy travel. When crafting his company’s philosophy, he asked himself what he wanted other companies to do for him as a customer. Ultimately, he wants his company to have fun interacting with customers.

Going the Extra Mile

Colin and his team always go the extra mile in customer interactions. In his free time, Colin helps people enhance their resumés so they can confidently enter the workforce. In 2018, he had the #1 post in the job subreddit, which has received 14,000 upvotes and at least 10,000 or 12,000 comments. Colin loves helping people no matter their situation because he understands that finding a job can change someone’s life. People always thank him for his help and purchase Sheets & Giggles products as a token of appreciation.

Reinvesting into the Company

Reinvesting isn’t something that Colin considers deeply. He raises money for his company from investors, is a W-2 employee, and pays above-market wages for his team. Colin wants to keep building and ensure he’s comfortable in how he lives. He hopes the business will pay off big someday and gain a more significant presence in the US, but he wants to do it in his own time.

Too often, people work themselves to death, but this isn’t the right mindset, in Colin’s opinion. Life is just one long moment, and it’ll be gone before you know it. He isn’t a big fan of hustle culture because some people can get lost in their company and lose their sense of self. To combat this, he simply chooses to be happy every day.

Elevating to the Next Level

Last year was the company’s first profitable year, and the company’s focus will be on increasing EBITDA (or Earnings Before Interest, Taxes, Depreciation, and Amortization) and profit margins. From there, Colin wants to use those funds to continue to grow the business. He thinks that raising continually larger amounts of capital for a consumer brand is a bit of a trap; therefore, he doesn’t want to raise a ton of capital and keep running the business profitably. He wants to utilize the revenue to grow the brand. 

The Sheets & Giggles team plans to introduce pajamas and socks using the brand’s traditional fabric to create things that customers can wear on their bodies. Colin originally planned to sell the sheet sets at $100, but with COVID-19 inflation and production costs, the base price became $150. In the future, he wants to create a line of products that the company can sell for less than $100. On the other hand, some customers ask for more premium products because competitors sell items for $1000. Because they want the best of the best, Colin is considering creating even higher-quality products at a higher price range, ideally $300 to $400.

Advice for Entrepreneurs

Colin advises future business leaders to avoid selling physical items. He says there was a specific time when creating physical brands was possible, but that time has passed. E-commerce can be complex because you’re always searching for that next sale. If someone is dead set on e-commerce and producing physical goods, they must focus on three things.

First, they should have a high gross margin production in retail prices, such as 80% or more. This will include all production process phases, from shipping to returns to discounts and PayPal fees because they add up quickly.

Second, an aspiring entrepreneur should develop a product that is consumable or frequent-purchase, like a health bar or drink brand. If customers like the product, they’ll purchase it every two weeks. 

Lastly, Colin highly recommends a subscription product model because it’s very valuable for companies when they plan, budget, and predict growth. He and his team have to fight for every sale because customers tend to purchase the product only once or twice. The company has to constantly create new ads, materials, and content to keep customers engaged in the product and increase sales. Bedding is a challenging category because it doesn’t guarantee ongoing revenue.