Down to Basics brings luxury ‘down’ to the masses

Down to Basics, known for it high-end selection of fine quality bedding and bath products and home accessories, will now offer its own line of down bedding at discounted prices.

Known for high-end line, bedding store tries out wholesale prices

BY GLORIA STRAVELLI

Staff Writer

Susan Fowler’s mind is always working, busily turning over new ideas on how to market her exclusive line of high-quality down bedding products.

That’s how, in the first place, the comforter she stitched at home became the prototype for the luxurious bedding the wealthy and pampered tuck themselves into at night.

Over the course of 15 years, Fowler has built a thriving business around the down comforter she designed and patented. Down to Basics in Red Bank is a premier purveyor of fine quality, high-end bedding sold in her shop in The Galleria at 12 Bridge Ave. and at upscale retail outlets, hotels and spas around the country.

Mary Cavalieri (l-r), Jane Arai, Christl Schambach and Susan Fowler provide the excellent customer service Down to Basics is known for.

Now, she is taking Down to Basics in another direction, inspired by a foray into mass marketing via cable TV’s QVC channel, which will begin selling Fowler’s exclusive “Diagon” down comforter this fall.

The Rumson resident is introducing wholesale-to-the-public pricing to a business built on luxury and unsurpassed quality.

Last week, Fowler announced that Down to Basics’ own line of pricey down bedding products — a queen-size comforter can cost upward of $2,000 — will now be sold at a 50 percent discount.

The new policy is in-store only, she stressed, to give local customers the edge and protect other outlets for her products.

“The QVC pricing is kind of the impetus for the change in the store,” she said last week. “The aim is to get a lower-priced product but keep the same “poof” in the comforter and high thread count cover.

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“It’s something I thought about for a while,” she continued, “but I was afraid to hurt the perception of the business. You have to have the volume and now we do.”

According to Fowler, the new strategy is made possible by the shop’s steadily expanding wholesale base, ranging from boutiques to luxury hotels and spas.

“We began this store with two to three wholesale outlets, and we now have about 30 outlets,” explained Fowler, who said the shop’s business is divided about evenly between retail customers and wholesale outlets. While she declined to divulge an annual sales figure, Fowler said the shop sells thousands of down bedding products each year.

“Spas and hotels order lots of comforters so better prices are available to them. We’ve reached the point where we can pass the savings along to customers,” she said. “I really feel good about this. We have to make it up in volume, but I think we can do that”.

In part, Fowler acknowledged, the new strategy is also customer-driven.

“Most people who come in will buy what’s on sale. Ninety percent of the time, that’s what they buy. If we make it across the board, we give them access to everything,” she said.

Under the new pricing policy, Down to Basics’ top-of-the-line king-size Diagon Comforter that retails for $2,297 can now be purchased in-store for $1,150; a more basic queen-size baffle box comforter priced at $299 will now go for $150. A down pillow selling for $79 will now sell for $39.50

Fowler stressed the new policy will apply to purchases of Down to Basics down products at The Galleria shop only — not phone orders or orders placed on the Web site www.downtobasics.com.

“We don’t want to undercut our outlets,” she noted.

Fowler is also planning to offer more fine linens at deeply discounted prices by shopping for overstocks and sellouts. Last week, she’d just returned from Manhattan where she bought up an entire lot of high-thread-count percale sheets she will sell at a 60 percent discount.

“This king-size percale flat sheet sold originally for $120; we can sell it for $50,” she said.

But Fowler is mindful of the need for balance in promoting the new price points while maintaining the shop’s carefully built reputation for fine quality and excellent customer service.

“It’s a test run,” she said, “but we don’t want to change the image of the shop. I want to keep it high end, want to keep it the way it is, but pass on the savings.

“The challenge is to put together the quality you get with the front part of the store, the availability of product lines, high quality down and excellent customer service, at half the price.”

After all, the customer base at Down to Basics shops very high end like Yves Delorme French-made bed linens, and is accustomed to service that includes house calls.

“Now, I guess the message is,” Fowler said, “that you can come in here and have a quality shopping experience, personal attention, plus get these prices.”

Fowler was teaching home economics in the Ocean Township school system when she began to make duvet covers and children’s comforters for stores like Saks Fifth Avenue and Bonwit Teller in New York City. She was doing so well, she opened The Upstairs Down Shop on River Road in Fair Haven in the late 1980s.

Having sold that business, in 1991 she opened Down to Basics at The Galleria, where she found the high ceilings, tall windows and exposed brick walls of the old factory building the perfect backdrop for the shop’s refined bed, bath and home accessories lines.

Fowler’s ruminations on improving her product line led to the Diagon Comforter, a design she patented. The Diagon’s cloud-like weight is a result of stitching the comforter into triangle-shaped sections that hold the down in place, allowing for less fill. Swiss batiste and other high thread-count cotton covers and high fill-power down give the comforter loft and warmth without weight. Fowler also designed a special cover that allows for easy plumping of the comforter.

“Down to Basics is known for the puffiest comforter. I think it’s the puffiest on the market,” she said last week.

Immersed in launching the new pricing, Fowler is already mulling another first — kiosks in airports where she will sell the down travel pillow she invented to weary travelers.

The innovations have landed the Down to Basics line of comforters, pillows and duvet covers on beds in expensive hotel chains, luxurious spas, on the shelves of high-end retailers, the pages of design magazines and have earned the loyalty of well-heeled customers.