People power impresses morning TV presenter

TV personality Alison Hammond became an ‘intern’ for a day at Sleepeezee in Rochester, Kent.

She took part in the mattress making process and met the factory team as part of a NatWest and ITV campaign to promote their Backing Business initiative, a support network for smaller businesses. It wasn’t long before Hammond, impressed by Sleepeezee’s family culture, was telling managing director Steve Warren: “What I love about it here is the people.”

He explains: “‘Well, it’s the workforce that makes Sleepeezee, and even though we’ve been through some tough times in the past couple of years, we’ve managed to keep everybody together.” ITV offers matched funding for eligible businesses towards advertising for their campaigns and additional creative help if required as part of Backing Business. Natwest provides support to ‘make it easy to do business’. Amy Curtis, head of marketing at Sleepeezee, says: “The support from NatWest keeps Sleepeezee at the forefront of technology in the factory and helps drive investment towards becoming a much more sustainable company. “We are always looking for new ways to expand our sustainability efforts alongside our latest instalment of 665 energy-saving solar panels at our factory in Kent which contribute more than 46,000kg of CO2 reduction per year.”

NatWest’s provided Sleepeezee with a Coronavirus Business Interruption Loan of £2 million to help them through the pandemic. As well as this, NatWest provided financial support on three key sets of machinery to improve the business’s environmental credentials and factory efficiency including solar panels, tape edgers and a quilt machine.