Canadian Showcase: Ben & Mark, Benji Sleep Co-Founders

It’s Canadian Showcase time! For this post we’re starting off with a little story from the bedroom 😉

I’ve been married for almost 20 years and we’ve always had a queen-sized bed. Even after two kids and sleepless nights with a crowd, we never felt the need for more space. Then we got a dog and now we’ve decided to upgrade to a king-size. Priorities, am I right?

Since we’re doing a full bedroom refresh and I’m trying really hard to shop Canadian whenever I have an option, I set out to find a Canadian brand that makes comfortable sheets. I’ll fully admit that I’m a sheet-snob… they have to be white, they have to be soft and they have to be easy to wash. You’d be surprised at how difficult this task was! Until I came across Benji Sleep.

I was immediately drawn to their vibrant website, quirky language, claim to have “the softest damn sheets on the internet” and veritable avalanche of positive reviews. But let me clarify one thing that’s really important: The reviews hailed not only the bedding but the customer service as well. To me, that makes a huge decision in my buying process.

Full disclosure: I have not yet purchased my sheets but that’s just because I’m still a few weeks away from our new bedroom set arriving. But I will post my review on Instagram, you can betcha that. Still, I wanted to learn more about this Canadian brand and Co-Founders Ben & Mark were nice enough to spend some time to answer a few questions for us.

Have a look!

Bedding is a competitive space. What made you decide that there was room in this market for you to distinguish your product?

Something as simple as buying new bedding can be a pain, we underestimate how inconvenient it would be to buy things like bedding at a big-box store.

When we first moved downtown, Mark and I lived together and we needed to buy some new bedding. Like most people we walked down to the nearest big box store.

They have overwhelming options to choose from. You find yourself asking what material, what thread count is the best, how much should I pay… we listened to sales people selling us on high thread count, and the fact that quality came with a premium price. After some research we found this just wasn’t true.

We knew there had to be a better way to do this. The main inspiration behind starting Benji was our sheer motivation to break the status quo when it came to buying bed sheets.

We wanted to create the “Softest Damn Sheets on the Internet” simple as that!

We set out to simplify the entire process by eliminating your trip to the big-box store, debunking the myths around thread count and offering high-quality, and affordable bedding ALL online with just a few clicks.

As someone who’s recently been overwhelmed by the sheer volume of choice in bedding, can you tell us a bit about what sets your brand apart?

When it comes to our operations, we didn’t want to be like the traditional bedding company, we wanted to have fun with it and we wanted to include our personalities in our brand. I think we did a good job of that if you look at our marketing!

Our main driving force is our customer. We LOVE hearing feedback from our customers, good or bad. We do everything we can to hear all feedback and find ways to continuously improve for our customer.

We provide a customer service chat line on the website that we monitor every single day. It has allowed us to be in direct contact with our customers to see what it is that they want, and how we can improve from a quality standpoint. Continuous improvement is very important to us.

From my understanding, your sheets are made from microfibre, which is a synthetic material. There are tons of resources that tout the benefits of microfibre over cotton but can you explain why this is a good-choice material for bedding?

Reaching the right combination of materials in our bedding involved a lot of trial and error.

We tried absolutely every type of sheet fabric out on the market. Traditional cotton, bamboo, silk, and even linen! We tried and tested every single fabric to find which was not only the softest, but also at a price point ($95.00) that really made sense. The majority of our competitors are priced well over $150 plus shipping. By working directly with manufacturers, we are able to cut costs and pass the savings directly to our customers and we also have FREE shipping on all Benji Bundles!

We finally decided to work with a manufacturer to produce a double brushed, high performance microfiber that is designed to be extremely soft.

Our sheets are also sweat wicking, so you stay dry while you sleep. They’re hypoallergenic and temperature regulating, keeping hot sleepers cool and cool sleepers cozy!

Another aspect that was important to us was exceeding environmental standards. It was extremely important to us that our bedding met Oeko-Tex Standards, which ensures no harmful chemicals or contaminants are used.

What does being a Canadian brand mean to you?

Being a Canadian company means being trustworthy, loyal and standing behind our product, but never failing to learn from our customer feedback.

What’s next for your brand? We’d love to hear about your vision for the future!

We started Benji with a few important things in mind; simplicity, affordability, and quality bedding available with just a few clicks. The future of Benji will be dependent on our customers as they will steer us in a direction that will help us launch new products and have fun along the way! We hope to introduce blankets, comforters and pillows in the next year!

Our Reviews tell the best story with how our customers are feeling about benji bedding products!

This wouldn’t be an interview if we didn’t ask…. Where did the name Benji Sleep come from?

Haha! We get this question a lot. When we started Benji this was one of the things that took more time than we expected. We wanted a name that would be easy to remember and give you a feeling of what our brand was all about just by hearing the name. (simple and fun)

“What do people love?” …  dogs!

“Who is  a famous dog that everybody loves?”… Benji!

Also, Markji didn’t exactly roll off the tongue…

And there you have it folks, another great Canadian brand with personality and an amazing product. Remember that shopping Canadian is not just about being patriotic and supporting our local economy. It also means you’re buying products that meet Canadian health and safety guidelines, better lead times (Covid has really impacted cross-boarder shipments) and helps highlight brands like this on the global market. Mostly though, I promise it’ll make you feel good ❤️

Thanks again for following along with our Canadian Showcase! If you missed our last feature you can read all about Jodie Pappas, Clean Kiss Founder HERE

See you next time! And always remember, “A day without a nap is like a cupcake without frosting.” (Terri Guillemets).