Biting back against bedbugs: Totowa company sees problem as an opportunity

BY ANDREW TANGEL

STAFF WRITER

As bedbugs infest news coverage and crawl into the public consciousness, a Totowa business has found an opportunity for profit.

TYSON TRISH/STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER

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Totowa business is capitalizing on the bed bug hysteria of the day. Precision Custom Coatings LLC is making covers that will keep bed bugs out of mattresses. The mattress covers help hotel operators salvage at least the mattresses in the case of infestations. Shaile Dusaj is the company's point person for the covers.

Precision Custom Coatings LLC, which produces fabric interior linings for products from shirts to cars to climate-control systems, has begun producing bedbug-proof mattress coverings.

Precision started producing the encasements — which aim to keep the blood-sucking pests from colonizing mattresses and box springs — in mid-2009.

"It's a problem for some people. It's an opportunity for us," said Shaile Dusaj, Precision's director of industrial sales.

By this time last year, the company's three factories in China were shipping 40,000 encasements a month to Precision's customers, which then repackage them under their own brand names and distribute to retailers, Dusaj said.

Now the company is shipping about 160,000 encasements a month, mostly to the United States but also to Australia, Thailand and Japan.

"It has just exploded," Dusaj said of demand.

It's unclear to what extent bedbugs have become more of a problem. The bugs had been considered eradicated but have resurfaced at high-profile locations such as the Niketown store in Manhattan.

While the demand has grown, Dusaj said Precision's three factories outside of Shanghai are running at only about one-third of capacity.

Precision began producing the encasements last summer after its customers expressed interest in the products, the components of which Precision already made, Dusaj said. The company had produced similar coverings marketed to sufferers of dust-mite allergies.

The bedbug-proof encasements are made from polyester fabric laminated to a polyurethane film, along with a fine-tooth zipper that closes tightly, covering the entire mattress.

"The encasement is a proven non-chemical tool to reduce the potential harborages for the bedbugs," Changlu Wang, a Rutgers University entomologist, said, using the technical term for where bedbugs live.
While one could argue encasements can lead to more dispersed infestations, Wang thinks they are a good part of a pest-control strategy.

In cases of outbreaks involving non-encased mattresses, the cases can trap the bedbugs after investgations.

"They sense the presence of the host. They want to bite, but they cannot bite through," Wang said.

"They can multiply inside," he added, "but they cannot get out. Eventually they will starve to death."

In 2009, Precision sold about 200,000 encasements, contributing 1 percent to the company's annual revenue of about $120 million, said Scott Tesser, Precision's president. Precision sells its products to businesses that distribute to retail stores and hotels.

So far this year, Tesser said, the company has sold more than 600,000 units. At this rate, he said, encasements would contribute up to 7 percent to the company's sales this year.

Tesser expects Precision's mattress encasement sales to at least double next year, but it's unclear how strong demand will remain in the long term.

"I'm not sure how long the window stays open," Tesser said. "I'm sure at some point the 'epidemic' gets under control. Does the consumer feel the same need to purchase a mattress encasement? I don't know. But I'm certainly anticipating this current scenario will last through 2011."

E-mail: tangel@northjersey.com

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