(The Sleeved Blanket Product)

 Gary Clegg (an university student in 1997) had

found it difficult to change the channel while he
was watching TV in his room on a couch in his
sleeping bag, then he cut a flap for his both right
and left hand, rather than lift his arm out of the
sleeping bag
 Then a prototype of that kind of blanket with
sleeves was made by Gary’s mom to give out as gift
for Gary’s friend
 That idea had appeared repeatedly along the way
Gary and his brother, Jeff experiencing their
passion in snowboarding and traveling
 Another positive response to the idea also came
from friends and family
 Started In 2004 in a  Jeff’s effort:
small business with  Set up the business
the capital of $20,000 infrastructure
 Website development
 Run through web-
 Online payments system
based business
 On Jan 20, 2006:
 Gary’s effort:
 Warehouse filling
 Researched the
patents, completed
 The website
 Found a textiles
supplier (slanket.com) went live
 Oversaw the production  The product price set
(in China) on $64.95
 Withzero marketing budget, Gary used this
following business model to build demand:
 Online word-of-mouth promotion to direct web
traffic:
 Digg.com
 Daily Candy (Email newsletter and insider guide)
 Mailing list of bloggers
 Product review websites
 The power of public relations like:
 Emailing and cold-called radio stations and
newspapers
 telling the story of the Slanket
 Offering Slanket giveaways to be used in contests
 Penetrated into SkyMall in-flight catalog (in the fall
2007) at retail price of $38 and sold 3000 units
•Online shopping
•Quickly get huge traffic
•Get huge orders
•Being top product in
period of 2006-2008
  The power of public relations like (cont…):
 Television shopping channel QVC sales through live hosts
24 hours a day (US,UK,Germany,Japan,Italy), sold over
30,000 units at on-air retail price $32
 Promoted the company to media groups
 During three years of existence,Slanket sales had
been strongly seasonal (sales on 32% in 1st quarter
and 60% in the 4th quarter of the year)
 Using handwritten note in every Slanket, thanking
customers for purchasing the product
 Part of the Slanket sales are subject to donations
for charities
 In Mid-2008, Snuggie
was launched by All-Star
Lower priced version of
the Slanket
Made of an inferior,
thinner blanketing fabric
Using smart
commercial
 Established in 1984
 Well-known form of
infomercial
 Long-form direct
response advertisements
 30 minutes in length
 Talk shows or
documentaries are
broadcasted through the
night
 Low enough ads rates
 Ran between 2 am and 6
am  provide additional
revenues
 Short-form direct
response advertisements
 2 minutes in length
 Ran during the day or night
 Consumers can directly
respond via 1-800 or web
 DRTV has high response
rate through consumers’
excitement or sense of
urgency
 Constructing product offer around of $19.99 or
$29.99 or multiple easy payments
 Provoking TV viewers to respond by phone or
internet:
 If consumers call right at the time limit given, the offer
will be doubled
 Improving margin on the transaction, termed
“Upselling” in the industry, by offering:
 Additional product for gifts
 Related products
 Free gifts
 Put charge on shipping and handling for item
purchased and the bonus
 Snuggie Snuggie launched  Snuggie priced
infomercial began in 2 minutes at $24.99 (with
airing in Oct, 2008 infomercial book light) 
$19.99 
 AllStar purchased $19.99 (for two
slots on ESPN and pieces)
Comedy Central One of Snuggie’s
customers had
 Snuggie get stumbled upon
high demand: 4 Slanket when
million Snuggies they not received
were sold within Snuggie on time
two months due to the delays
Product demonstration: talking on
the phone, eating popcorn, holding a
baby made simpler by wearing a
sleeved blanket
The Popularity of Sleeved Blanked
 Nov 2008  Public awareness for sleeved blankets
among heavy TV viewers and college student
 The Snuggie brand was becoming a pop culture referent
 The Consumers  took to the internet and the street 
to express their feeling for the Snuggie
 There were 500 Snuugie fan sites on Facebook
 Within weeks of the first airing of the Snuggie
Infomercial, parody video began to appear on Youtube
 End of Nov 2008  there were dozens of Snuggie video
parodies
 The Cuddle blanket sold for $44.95, and The Nuddle
blanket sold for $68.00
 The sleeved blanket had captured the imagination of
consumers around the world
The Consumers Experience
 Blogs, discussion boards and Facebook provided
a rich picture of consumer attitudes and
behaviors with respect to sleeved blankets,
among non-owners and owner alike
 Among non-owners, some felt its lure, while
other were put off, and some felt both
impulses at the same time
 Blog postings linked it to societal vices like
self-absorption, self-indulgence, and social
indifference, and their consequences, such as
obesity
The Consumers Experience
 The lure of the blanket for many people was
strong
 Snuggie giving the ability to use laptop, TV
remote, talk on the phone, read the book, and
eat snacks while staying covered
 The product was often bought as a gift, or the
purchase for self was masked by buying for the
whole family
The Slanket Business in a Post-Snuggie World

 The notion of a first mover advantage, that the pioneer

in a product category was assured of a head start on
those who come later.
 Yet Slanket was the better product
 Long run  Slanket confident had the edge
 Short run  Slanket consider their marketing plan for
the remainder of the winter season
 Slanket adopt infomercial selling.
 There are practise having to do with customer service
and inflated shipping and handling charge that trouble
 Gery wanted to explore the internet as a marketing
medium
 Snuggie’s populat success had created enormous
volumes ofweb traffic on Youtube, Google, Facebook
and Myspace
The Slanket Business in a Post-Snuggie World

 Compete.com showed that Snuggie’s 219,000

unique visitors/month far exceeded traffic of
Slanket.com
 A little over half of the visitors (52%) followed the link for
which Snuggie had paid
 These paid links appeared either on 3 common search
engines
 The remaining 48% arrived at the site a no cost to Snuggie
 Only 3% typed the website address directly into a browser
 The balance of 45% of the site visitors followed unpaid
results from a search engine search
The Slanket Business in a Post-Snuggie World

 Jeff Clegg spent about $2000/month to generate online

transactions
 Snuggie spent about $111,000 in November to generate
web traffic if, as expert speculated, it had to pay about
$1.00 for each visitorwho clicked through to its website
 Clegg preferred forms of marketing that didn’t require
up-front investment rather than marketing expenditures
 Online marketing executives at Skymall also did some
marketing on behalf of Slanket
 Nothing performed better than QVC in Cleggs’ view