by PLANTATION, Fla. – The U.S. Postal Service may have cornered the slogan, “Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds,” but they haven’t met GhostBed Vice President of Operations Carol Crisafulli yet.
For 16 years, the mother of five and grandmother of 14 has been the steward of operations for the leading consumer sleep products brand. She helped take the company from a start-up to 11 production facilities and warehouses in the United States, while assuring its ability to deliver orders anywhere in the country within a few days and overseeing customer service issues with aplomb. Today, she and her team manage the brand’s state-of-the-art supply chain, manufacturing, logistics and customer service functions.
“Carol has been instrumental in the success of GhostBed, really the secret sauce in making our operations so effective and efficient,” said Marc Werner, CEO of GhostBed. “She has great insight into the business, so she is able to anticipate challenges and be prepared to address them for our retail partners and consumers.”
When Crisafulli joined Nature’s Sleep, the parent company of GhostBed, there was a modest manufacturing and distribution system in place. But when the company experimented with a Groupon offering, the company was surprised with more than 10,000 orders for mattresses that needed to be fulfilled quickly. Not only were there manufacturing challenges, but even FedEx Trade Networks didn’t have the technology to pull off the shelf to handle the orders.
“We were one of FedEx Trade Network’s first e-commerce, dropship customers,” Crisafulli said. “They weren’t equipped to handle 10,000 or more units to ship from multiple warehouses in a few days in those early years. We worked very closely with them to develop a unique program at the time, which has become the industry standard today.”
More recently, the company had to contend with major supply chain issues presented by COVID-19, which Crisafulli credits as “the toughest challenge of her entire career.” The company was able to successfully navigate through it because of the diverse supply chain she helped create.
Crisafulli is singularly focused on optimum performance in each area of the business she oversees, which is a key asset for Alan Hirschhorn, the company’s executive vice president of sales.
“Knowing that we have Carol and our team behind our sales organization gives us the confidence to make the commitments to quality and service that we give our retailers,” he said. “Her team deals with many issues of all types everyday yet makes our service to our customers look seamless.”
