My sheets were, in fact, made by two former women’s college basketball coaches, Susan Walvius, 46, and Michelle Marciniak, 37, who worked together at the University of South Carolina, and liked the feeling of their athletic shorts so much that they decided to make sheets out of them.
Their sheets, which they called Sheex, would be a “performance” product, imbued with all the properties you associate with athletic gear: they would wick moisture away from your skin, stretch and breathe better than cotton, dry fast and wear long.
Indeed, Ms. Walvius and Ms. Marciniak hoped to carve out a whole “performance bedding category” by reminding folks that sleep is a fitness issue.
“I sleep hot, and I think most people do,” Ms. Walvius said by phone the other day. “But I don’t think people realize that if you sleep hot, your sleep is disrupted, and the next day you can’t perform well.”
Ten years ago, she said, “as coaches, we were cotton purists. Then we saw the whole evolution of performance fabric. Now, you don’t train in anything but performance fabric, because of the moisture wicking and the temperature management. It just helps your body function better. We thought it would be great to take this technology and apply it to bedding.”
Ms. Marciniak, who was sharing the phone with her business partner, added: “Everybody needs sleep. Whether you’re a mom or an athlete, everybody has to perform the next day. We’re making a performance home story. We want to own the consumer from 8 p.m. to 8 a.m.”
Doesn’t everyone? Sleep has always been big business. In 2010, Americans spent more than $5.8 billion on their mattresses and box springs, up 4 percent from the year before.
But as sleep studies have increasingly focused on the health risks associated with lousy sleep, from Type 2 diabetes to hypertension, obesity and a weakened immune system, the makers of so-called sleep products have begun marketing their sheets, pillows and mattresses as fitness aids, crucial gear to prep for the athletic event that is your life.
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