More than just pillow talk

适之宝枕工坊：不再是枕边细雨

http://www.thestatesman.net/page.arcview.php?clid=8&id=143107&usrsess=1

Lu Haoting
BEIJING, May 5: They are really just cloth bags, stuffed with soft materials such as down, cotton, or plastic fibre. But Ms Zhang Jing, a native of East China’s Shandong Province, believes there are huge opportunities in pillows.
“You spend one-third of your life asleep,” Ms Zhang says. “That little thing that cushions your head can determine whether you get a good night’s sleep.”
Her vision has served her well, too. Ms Zhang has made this idea work by turning it into a multimillion-yuan business. Since she opened China’s first specialised pillow boutique in 2001, Ms Zhang has opened more than 200 outlets.
Ms Zhang says the secret lies in her extensive selection of pillows, which come in a diverse range of materials and sizes to cater to different customer needs.
“As long as you go deep into it and diversify your offerings, there are lots of opportunities in businesses related to people’s daily lives eating, drinking, sleeping, and even going to the toilet,” says Ms Zhang, general manger of Qingdao Suitable Bedding Co. Besides common pillow fillings, Suitable Bedding offers pillows filled with more than 10 kinds of herbal mixes, each in five different sizes. There are even pillows designed for special purposes, such as horseshoe-shaped travel pillows and little cushions for use in cars. The company also offers products for babies and children and even pillows shaped like a man’s arm for lonely single women. Ms Zhang admits that China’s pillow industry is still “underdeveloped and backward” compared with markets in Japan and the USA. “Many Chinese consumers would prefer to spend thousands of yuan on fancy mobile phones rather than 100 yuan ($12) on a new pillow,” Ms Zhang says.
“But I believe more people are starting to pay attention to their health and the quality of life as they begin earning more.”
Ms Zhang stumbled onto the novel idea of opening a pillow boutique in 2001 when she was working in the logistics industry. Her company was teetering on the verge of bankruptcy, and she was having a hard time getting to sleep at night. “I had a slight (degenerative spinal condition known as) cervical spondylosis,” Zhang recalls. A friend noted that her pillow was too high and was possibly worsening her neck problems, but Zhang was unable to find a satisfactory pillow after searching almost every shopping centre in Qingdao.
“They were either too high or too low, too soft or too firm,” Zhang says. She finally ended up making her own pillow. When she was slowly recovering, she hit upon the idea of opening a speciality boutique. The rest, as they say, is history. China Daily/ANN