Bedding industry inline for an Alexium International refresh

Bedding and pillow manufacturers could be about to see their playing field levelled, courtesy of chemicals company Alexium International Group (ASX: AJX).

Currently, manufacturers of bedding, mattresses, pillows and other bedroom paraphernalia do not have a standard measuring stick with which to compare the thousands of different products manufactured around the world each year.

The status-quo has reached saturation point, with the lack of performance metrics resulting in “misinformed bedding/pillow manufacturers” and “underinformed end-user purchasers at the retail level,” according to Alexium International.

The company says that manufacturers are competing “purely on a subjective basis” because products are essentially “indistinguishable”.

As a means of setting the record straight and allowing actual product differentials to be distinguished, Alexium says it has developed a novel testing method to test the effectiveness of PCM across several industries including bedding, but also, the broader “sleep industry” which it says is now worth A$50 billion and expected to grow at a CAGR of 6.5% for the next 5 years.

“The inability to measure PCM performance has been a known gap in our industry since inception. Out of a complete void of reliable metrics was born a relentless pursuit by our scientists to figure it out,” said Dr Dirk Van Hyning, CEO of Alexium International.

“Not only did they develop a highly accurate, quantifiable and defendable methodology for comparing PCM solutions, but the results of our testing revealed what we already believed to be true: Alexicool PCM not only feels cooler when compared to other PCM products, it is cooler,” said Dr Van Hyning, referring to Alexium’s Alexicool product.

According to Dr Van Hyning, Alexium has developed a testing protocol using a standard industry tool to quantify the cooling capacity, or enthalpic cooling, of PCM products when applied to pillows and other bedding fabrics.

Using this testing protocol, pillows treated with Alexium’s Alexicool PCM solution were shown to deliver over 500% greater cooling capacity than commercially available pillows treated with other PCM products.

It has been a testing 12 months for Alexium, seeing its shares decline from the heady heights of $0.50 per share in June 2017 as several new contracts and purchase orders were agreed and many more were forecast on the horizon.

However, the business has continued to struggle; recording a A$2 million loss in the last 6 months of 2017 and reporting a 23% decline in revenues despite occupying 5% of the US bedding market.

Following today’s announcement, market analysts were keenly awaiting how investors would respond to the news at the open on Monday morning with shares closing at $0.18 per share last week.

Furthermore, Alexium said it has already made plans to roll-out a comprehensive marketing communications campaign to educate bedding/pillow industry manufacturers on its test results and said that “point-of-purchase display materials” are also being created for retailers to help consumers distinguish among the variety of PCM-treated mattresses and pillows.