In 2022, Rest began to lay out the bedding market. However, President Zhou soon discovered that this is a category with many competitors and high traffic costs. A question was posed to President Zhou: “If it was 2015, then the cross-border e-commerce traffic dividend would allow us to do a very simple business, but when the traffic dividend is declining, how can we break through?」
“Category innovation” is the final answer given by President Zhou, which means that it is necessary to find user needs that have not yet been discovered and met. To this end, Mr. Zhou and his team conducted 8 months of market research in the US, distributed more than 4,000 questionnaires, personally visited 150 local consumers, and read countless industry reports and relevant user reviews on Amazon. In the end, they aimed for a new category called “cool bedding”.

Zhou Yong said, “We generated a word cloud from user reviews of existing products on Amazon, and found that there are two words that account for a large proportion of negative reviews. One is Hot, which means the body feels very hot; the other is lightweight, which means the bedding is too light. According to statistics, about 40% of people with sleep disorders will experience excessive body heat. This made us start thinking about product strategies from a different path. That is, in the past, merchants usually divided categories according to material, such as silk quilts, duvets, and bamboo fiber quilts, but no one divided them according to the crowd. However, everyone's sleeping habits are actually different, and we think this is a great opportunity, and Rest's brand positioning was born from this — we are based on continuous innovation in form, materials, and technology to reshape standards to create bedding that is more suitable for consumers who can't sleep well. To this end, we also came up with our own brand slogan - “Sleep Well, One Sleeper at a Time”. Abbottt, Premiere Creative’s creative director.

Based on this insight, Rest identified the core target audience as “Hot Sleepers” represented by menopausal women, athletes, pregnant women, and children, that is, people who are prone to physical problems such as hot flashes and night sweats while sleeping. Rest has created a brand new “niche category” for this group of American consumers who have trouble sleeping, and launched the “Cooling” quilt series, which will be popular in Europe and America in the future. Within a year and a half of its launch, Rest achieved annual sales of 30 million US dollars across all channels and achieved a high repurchase rate of over 30%. Rest's success also means that the “Red Sea” is not necessarily without new opportunities; only by willing to work hard and dig deeper into customer insight, even the most detailed categories can create new growth.

Zhou Yong said, “We adhere to the 4U principle when it comes to discovering innovative products in categories:
Unworkable can't be implemented
Unavoidable just needed
Urgent
Understated Unfollowed
The core is to continuously dig deeper into user needs and meet these user needs that have not received enough attention before through innovative products. For example, Unworkable — traditional quilts are meant to keep you warm, but they don't provide a cool sleep; Underserved—can't solve Hot Sleeper problems such as hot flashes and night sweats. Based on this way of thinking and measuring standards, Rest has created more potential products.
In the comments, we noticed that feedback from customers that the coolness did not meet expectations. After careful analysis of the relevant negative reviews, VOC, and comments in return reports, we found that Cool Duvet was an innovative product. Some customers misused the product. For example, putting on another layer of duvet cover over the summer duvet greatly affected the coolness of the product. To this end, we specially designed a main map of “User Guide: How to Get the Best Cooling Experience”, and actively helped customers eliminate the possibility of incorrect usage when the customer wrote back to us about the poor cooling experience, and optimized the product experience. Pay attention to user feedback and respond in a timely manner — this is one of the secrets behind Rest Xia Liang's maximum monthly sales volume of 20,000 pieces. "

According to President Zhou, joining Amazon is actually a natural thing. He mentioned that as a consumer-oriented brand, Rest always focuses on consumers' needs and preferences. If users like to buy from which channel, we will consider expanding to which channel. Overseas, the Amazon Marketplace has a large and loyal user base because shopping is more secure, FBA shipping is faster, and the Prime membership experience is better.

In the 12 months since Amazon was launched in May 2022, Rest has achieved more than 10 million dollars in revenue on Amazon, and in recent years, Amazon's sales share of the overall business has risen rapidly from 20% to about 50%.
Zhou Yong said, “In the past, traditional cross-border e-commerce was to select platforms, find categories, and make popular products, but today if consumer brands want to go overseas, then they must get rid of the “selling goods mentality” and establish brand awareness. We need to target user pain points, develop innovative products, build a brand image, establish user mentality through consistent work, and focus on the full life cycle value of users in order to achieve a steady and long-term overseas business layout. "

For Rest, category innovation is a difficult and correct path, and so is brand building. How to balance [sales volume that pursues faster results] and [brands that require long-term deep cultivation], Rest has its own long-term brand investment philosophy.

2 Second, continuous and omni-channel investment in brand building. In particular, continuously track and gain insight into the target audience's entire shopping journey to reach and build consumer awareness of the brand at every step. For example, Rest's core audience is American women between the ages of 45-54 who follow overseas lifestyle magazines and appear on social media and video platforms. To this end, Rest cooperated with overseas media and internet celebrities, established a comprehensive brand promotion matrix, and quickly completed the first stage of user education. Zhou Yong said, “We firmly believe that brand innovation must make the brand number one at the beginning and have the most potential. This must reach consumers widely across all channels, whether on social media or Amazon. "

1 First, our brand flagship store has gone through many rounds of design and optimization, and has become a “main position” to convey the brand concept and establish resonance with consumers. At the same time, we also post posts (Posts) frequently, bringing in more organic traffic and brand fans.

2 Second, in listing creation, Advanced A+ can present more creative materials such as videos and images, and can also use more compelling designs such as slides to present content such as brand stories, innovative fabrics, and major awards. It is an essential tool for attracting traffic and speeding up conversion. Moreover, through Advanced A+, we can also display many other cool products to achieve cross-selling and enhance the conversion of more single products.

3 In listing copywriting design, we will use “new materials” to position ourselves, emphasizing Evercool® + fabric technology innovation, so that consumers can more clearly perceive that Rest's cool duvet can truly solve some problems that cannot be solved with traditional materials.

After having an engaging brand flagship store and listing page, Rest's next question is how to reach more consumers and fully attract the store. Rest will use creative materials to achieve broad reach through Sponsored Brand Video (Sponsored Brand Video), amplify brand effects, and accelerate sales conversion.

When choosing promotional tools, Rest usually uses basic promotion tools such as coupons and flash sales, especially virtual bundles (bundles). It's a very effective fundraising and conversion tool that can generate up to 20% of sales. During the promotion period, Rest will also launch more major offers, such as buying a duvet to get a full set of products, or buying two to enjoy additional discounts. The value of such offers can effectively promote the sale of certain colors or products, thereby improving overall operational efficiency.
Effective promotion methods enabled Rest to achieve outstanding results in the 2024 Prime Membership Day promotion, with sales reaching about 2 million US dollars, an increase of more than ten times over weekdays.