John Cotton beds idea of a relaunch

John Cotton Home Textiles is on the verge of appointing a design consultancy to review and relaunch its brand.

The Leeds-based company, which manufacturers filled bedding such as pillows and duvets, has seen pitches from four groups for the project, which is thought to be worth about £250 000.

A decision was imminent as Design Week went to press.

John Cotton Home Textiles managing director Nicholas Cotton will neither confirm nor deny the budget. ‘I can’t tell you whether it will be £50 000 or £750 000,’ he says. However, he confirms that it is to ‘look at and relaunch the brand’.

Cotton will not rule out the possibility of a total rebrand of the company, including a name change, and says the project is necessary because consumer awareness of the filled bedding market needs to be increased.

‘We will look at who we are, what we are about and how we go about it. We are at the very beginning of the project so I am not ruling anything out,’ says Cotton. ‘We want to relook and relaunch our brand and that might come out under a number of guises. We want to garner a lot more interest in filled bedding as a product with the public. It’s very heavily commoditised. We want to increase consumer awareness,’ he adds.

There is no definitive timeframe for launch of the work, though it ‘should be’ in the next six months, according to Cotton.

The company, part of the John Cotton Group, was founded in 1933 and is Britain’s largest supplier of pillows and duvets.

Cotton refuses to divulge the consultancies involved in the pitch.