BUSINESS
This Canadian entrepreneur is putting an end to night sweats, one set of bed sheets and pair of pjs at a time
The Calgary-based LusomĂ©âs pyjamas and bed sheets promise to get rid of sweaty sheets â a routine misery for many people experiencing menopause, undergoing cancer treatment, or taking antidepressants.
âSweat doesnât stay in our fabric because of the surface chemistry. When you start to sweat into fabrics with wicking, itâll absorb the moisture, but it doesnât go anywhere. Weâre really wicking 2.0,â says Lara Smith, founder of LusomĂ©.
By Brennan Doherty Special to the Star
For many women older than 45, winter doesnât bring relief from hot flashes or night sweats. Menopause can make sleeping with the windows open in mid-January still feel like one of Torontoâs blazing July summer nights.
Anywhere from 75 to 80 per cent of people going through menopause experience night sweats of some kind, sometimes lasting for more than a decade. Night sweats also donât spare many breast or ovarian cancer survivors, Lupus patients, or anyone who sleeps with a duvet-loving partner. So LusomĂ©, a Calgary-based sleepwear brand selling across Canada, decided to put together pyjamas and bedsheets it claims can stop the waterworks in their tracks.
Lara Smith, LusomĂ©âs founder, spent years at the top of Canadian retailer Markâs Work Warehouse before starting her own company. During that time, she was dispatched to Southeast Asia, South America and Europe to hunt down the most innovating textile facilities and testing labs around. Eventually, she figured out a formula capable of addressing night sweats, as well as daytime temperature regulation.
LusomĂ© isnât cheap, nor does it act as an ice pack on an overheating personâs body. But as Smith says, its fabric does try and give everyone a decent nightâs sleep. She spoke to the Star from Calgary:
How do these pyjamas work?
The pyjamas canât actually stop a mechanism inside anyoneâs body from overheating. But as soon as moisture vapour or any sweat starts to come onto the surface of the body, the technology of the fabric â at the fibre level â will pull it away through the surface chemistry of the fabric and emit it into the air. It happens through rapid evaporation.
Compared to athletic brands, a lot of them use wicking polyester, and a lot of brands make claims of moisture wicking. Sweat doesnât stay in our fabric because of the surface chemistry. When you start to sweat into fabrics with wicking, itâll absorb the moisture, but it doesnât go anywhere. Weâre really wicking 2.0.
Sweat is our bodyâs way of trying to cool us down. Do you still feel warm if your fabric is wicking away all the moisture?
Most of our work was done on menopausal women who experience excessive night sweats. Getting rid of the need to wake up to soaking-wet pyjamas and change your sheets alleviates a lot of discomfort. Weâre not saying that we will cool the body down, or stop the body from overheating, with our pyjama fabric.
Now, the bedsheet fabric is very different technology. It absorbs heat energy before you start to sweat. Itâs a much more sophisticated technology â itâs really the ultimate cooling system. Effectively, it eliminates sweating before it even starts.
Menopause is something almost every woman goes through. Why do you think there are so few clothing options specifically aimed at them?
Itâs a complicated answer, and itâs kind of rooted in the psychology of what a woman deals with in menopause. Imagine youâre aging. Youâre not feeling great. You canât carry a child inside your body and give birth any longer. Thereâs also the stigma of aging. It is not a sexy conversation. So I think itâs all wrapped up in that.
Some celebrities have started making some noise. When Gwyneth Paltrow started talking about it, when Naomi Watts founded a company devoted to menopausal skin care, it opened up enough for the masses to talk about it. There are a lot of bandwagon jumpers in the past two years that are creating supplement companies or apps. Itâs a $60-billion market, and five per cent of overall marketing spending is aimed at menopausal women.
Your sister is a breast cancer survivor, and her situation led you to start the company. Why would sweat-wicking pyjamas be useful for cancer survivors?
Radiation treatment changes the overall physiology of cancer survivors. For ovarian or breast cancer, the treatment protocol essentially puts them into 10 years of menopausal symptoms â which are hormone changes and night sweats. I didnât do any of my work on LusomĂ© until I learned about my sisterâs suffering.
She was 39 and going through chemotherapy, radiation and then hormone protocols. She had excessive night sweats. I just thought that was criminal â that people trying to survive couldnât get a good nightâs sleep. There are thousands of new cancer patients daily. Their body chemistry changes, and they will overheat at night as a result. So itâs very, very helpful for them to have a solution.
Are there other demographics that might find it useful?
We are really delayed in putting out a product for men â because men also suffer from night sweats. Any hormone-related disease or condition, from hyperthyroidism to Lupus, can cause it. Night sweats can even be a symptom that youâre fighting serious illness. Depression medication and surgical recovery can also cause night sweats. So thereâs a plethora of conditions it can bring about.
How do you convince people that they actually need to buy another layer to stop them from sweating at night?
Thereâs great skepticism that a textile could work, and for good reason. There are so many brands using science theatre to make claims that canât be substantiated. Our approach is to partner with academic institutions to put forth research that compares our data to competitors. Very few brands go through this time and expense. But we can say weâve been verified by scientists at the University of Alberta. We are starting a clinical trial with Harvard University in the U.S. to evaluate the body temperature and health indicators of users when they sleep on our sheets.
We just want to protect the consumer. For instance, there are so many brands that use bamboo that say it uses natural cooling mechanisms. Thereâs some breathability in the fibre, there are some moisture-wicking properties, but sweat still gets trapped in it. So they canât claim it actually cools people down. Itâs irresponsible.
Youâve said you worked for big retailers before founding LusomĂ©. What do you do to stay ahead of the curve against companies that are much bigger than yours?
If a company has a lot of money and time and patience, they could get close to reverse-engineering our fabric, which is why we are always iterating. We have one of the worldâs leaders in textile on our board, Harrie Schoots. Heâs the past president of the American Association of Textile Chemists and Colorists. Heâs a genius when it comes to fabric development and innovation. So he is always getting his fabric mill to work on projects for us that they canât show anyone else. Weâre really staying ahead of the curve thanks to our adviser that has such a gravitas in the textile industry, as well as my relationships with fabric mills.
GET 30% OFF LUSOME.COMYouâre in the pyjamas-slash-athleisure business â what did the pandemic do to your sales?
Our business went through the roof. Our direct-to-consumer sales exploded during the pandemic. There were big opportunities in the U.S. Major retailers came calling. My partner attempted a hostile takeover at that time. But our sales quadrupled. As much as people were into pyjamas, women were also connecting lack of sleep to immunity. Weâre a health tech brand, so we have an extra layer. If youâre not sleeping and worried about sweating during the night, our pyjamas will help your health.
What was it like getting through a hostile takeover by your business partner? Iâm sure that couldnât have been easy.
Oh, it was horrible. Iâm still in shock. Listen, Iâm a woman who shakes hands and looks people in the eye. Previously, I never looked at the small print on every document. I will never be in that position again. I have lawyers and agreements now, and Iâm really well-versed on the risks. In fact, this turned out to be the best thing that could happen to our company because it really forced us to transform.
How?
Previously, we were a single-category niche womenâs pyjama brand that only sold to mom-and-pop independent stores, because that was the model of my former partner. I always wanted to innovate. I wanted to do big U.S. deals. And I wanted to get new fabrics market to help women. But the agreement with my business partner didnât allow me to do that. So, it took off the handcuffs.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Brennan Doherty is a former staff reporter for Star Calgary and the Starâs 24-hour radio room in Toronto. He is now a freelance contributor.
