CleanBrands LLC
OWNERS: Gary Goldberg, CEO, and Northbridge Equity Partners Type of business: Developer and distributor of allergen-blocking pillow and mattress encasements
LOCATION: 400 Massasoit Ave., East Providence
EMPLOYEES: 18; production is outsourced overseas Year FOUNDED: 2005 Annual sales: WND
Gary Goldberg grew up in the textile business. His grandfather, Leo, established Duro Industries in 1947, and his father, Stanley, ran the company until he sold it in 1997. As a boy, Goldberg was at the Fall River mill “every weekend, every day, every summer.”
He attended prestigious schools, but the mill is where he got his real education.
“I learned more than they could have taught me at textile chemistry school,” he said. “When you have the equipment, when you have the whole supply chain right in the factory, what are you going to learn?
It’s just all there.”
After Duro Industries was sold, Goldberg started his first company, CTM (Custom-Tailored Manufacturing), which provides outsourced manufacturing, design, product development and other services.
Next, he acquired Turfer Sportswear, which makes performance outerwear.
But the inspiration for CleanBrands LLC, his third company, was his family again – this time, because his eldest son, Sinjon, had difficulties breathing at night.
Goldberg and his wife, Elizabeth, volunteer with the Friends of Hasbro Children’s Hospital, and one night they met Dr. Robert Klein, director of the hospital’s asthma program.
He told them about dust mites and other allergens common in beds, which he said were “clogging up the ER” with adults and children who couldn’t breathe at night. In response, he had created a community outreach and educational program, “Draw A Breath.”
“I wanted to help him,” Goldberg said, “so I started working with him to determine what was in the bed, and what are the sizes of things in the bed on a microscopic level.”
The idea was to make mattress and pillow covers that could block those allergens. Building on his experience with performance outerwear, Goldberg worked with textile mills to create a new type of fabric he called MicronOne, because the pores are one micron – or about one-160,000th of an inch. That would be enough to block even the tiniest allergens.
And while the technology was developed in Rhode Island, the fibers are made in Japan, and production is in South Korea. Goldberg said he would love to manufacture in the United States, but consumers wouldn’t be willing to pay the substantially higher price he’d have to charge.
As it is, at $20 per standard pillow cover and $100 per queen-size mattress cover, Goldberg’s CleanRest products are pricier than other products in the same niche.
Goldberg has studied those products and is convinced they’re all flawed in one way or another – effective but noisy and hot when they’re made of vinyl; or soft but ineffective; or fairly effective as long as you don’t pull too hard or they’ll tear (he has samples to demonstrate).
Bed Bath & Beyond was the first major retailer to stock the covers, starting with 30 stores, then expanding to 220, and later this month, going into about 800. Kohl’s will begin stocking the covers this week at 875 stores, and he’s talking with JCPenney, Sears and Target – which is planning an 80-store test.
Meanwhile, last fall, the company got a major cash infusion from Northbridge Equity Partners of Montreal, now a co-owner. Among other things, the money paid for the development of a new marketing strategy built on the motto, “Protect Your Sleep.”
The idea is to position CleanBrands as an expert resource on sleep. As part of this strategy, the company has established relationships with the National Sleep Foundation and the Asthma and Allergy Foundation of America.
Last week, Goldberg flew to Los Angeles to start filming an infomercial. He’s attending a conference on allergies later this month to reach out to doctors. And he’s given away “thousands” of covers to sleep centers across the nation – as well as, on Feb. 2, to Crossroads Rhode Island, whose shelter beds had become infested with bed bugs.
In CleanRest’s first year, Goldberg said, the company sold about 50,000 pillow and mattress covers, but there are some 35 million allergy sufferers who might benefit from them. And there are more than 100 million others who might buy them to stay healthy.
The trick is to make CleanRest stand out in its field.
“There are real leadership brands, and we think CleanRest can be a real leadership brand,” he said. “The way Dyson reinvented vacuum cleaners, the way Gore-Tex set the standard for outerwear comfort, and the way TempurPedic said there’s a better way to make a bed.”
