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From the Las Vegas Market held last January
Video from Furniture Today.

On May 14-16, leaders of the mattress industry will converge in Naples, Fla. to attend the bedding conference sponsored by Home Furnishings Independents Association. Danny Seo, a famous green living advocate and the person behind Natural Care mattress (produced by Simmons), will be the headline speakerof the event to be held at the Ritz Carlton resort. He is expected to discuss about what going green should mean for the industry today.

Also expected to grace the event is Thom Winniger, a market strategist and author of the book, “Price Wars”. Other mattress marketing retail owners will also be sharing their success stories, providing a clearer picture on the state of the bedding industry today.

If interested in joining, contact Furniture Today: Meg Goldsby, at (336) 605-1066 or meg.goldsby@reedbusiness.com.

A hotel in New York City is offering something new on the room service list, one that should cater to a “Perfect Night’s Sleep”. Guest at The Benjamin can order from a selection of menus many sleeping essentials of almost every kind — water-filled pillows, hypo-allergenic, buck wheat made, mattresses with slip board, mattresses with box spring for extra firmness — all designed to give the most relaxing experience and pampering at the hotel.

If so desired, the guests also receive free milk and cookies along with their requests.

And if not satisfied with it, the hotel offers money-back guarantee.

“We have massage, white noise pillows, slippers, a mask,” explained Anya Orlanska, the sleep concierge at the Benjamin. “We want our guest to get a good night’s sleep so they can go and be very productive the next day at work.”

Via

Ron Trzcinski runs the Original Mattress Company, a Cleveland based establishment with about 11 factories and 100 mattress stores spread across the Midwest. His experience in the business is a good 40 years, nearly, and this includes some 18 years with Sealy Corp. Despite the changes in the industry, Trzcinski still applies the most basic concepts in mattress selling and is regarded highly in the business for his expertise.

Trzcinski wanted to demystify the process of buying a bed. He said he didn’t like the practice of manufacturers selling basically the same product with different names and fabrics through different retailers, making it hard for consumers to compare. Nor did he like high-pressure sales tactics or the fake urgency of some retailers’ markdowns.

So he adopted a nine-point philosophy for the company, emphasizing such qualities as excellence, value, courtesy and honesty. It’s posted in Original Mattress Factory stores and underscored in an orientation video shown to new employees.

Transparency in the manufacturing process is important to him, too. Customers are shown cutaway models of each mattress’s construction, along with models of the innersprings and the box springs. In the factories, customers can watch the manufacturing process — machines quilting fabric for covers and employees assembling layers of padding and springs, stitching the binding that joins the tops and sides and upholstering the box springs.

Customers also can see some competitors’ mattresses alongside one made by the Original Mattress Factory, all with the layers peeled back so they can compare what’s inside.

Trzcinski has stuck with the old ways, eschewing trendier viscoelastic ”memory” foam and air mattresses for innerspring types and a few models with latex or polyurethane foam cores. He sees problems with the newcomers’ performance, he said, and they just don’t meet his value standards.

More from this site.

Ken Harader of AC Mattress Company began working with them at the age of 12 and took ownership of the company in 1975. Today, he celebrates 50th years of mattress manufacturing.

It seemed like the start of a typical work week to Ken Harader one Monday in 1974 when he arrived at A.C. Mattress Company.

Harader met with his boss and the company founder, Bill Thomas, to discuss the day’s work plans.

Thomas then got up from his desk chair, walked to the front door of the office, collapsed, and lost consciousness.

He died at the local hospital later that day.

“I called the ambulance, and they came down and run him up to the hospital,” Harader said Thursday. “That was a shock.”

Harader already was a long-time employee and Thomas’ right-hand man when his boss collapsed that day.

He began work at the mattress company in the summer of 1958 when he was 12 years old. That summer he learned to work at a sewing machine, stitching together mattress covers.

He made 35 cents for sewing up each mattress cover.

“I’d do two a day and want to quit; that was very little money but seemed like plenty to me then,” he said.

In 1958, Harader didn’t dream that he would stay with the mattress company for 50 years and become its owner.

“I don’t know if this is what I wanted to do, but that’s what happened,” he said. “I probably spent a few years working at other jobs, but I always came back here.”

The business remained basically the same manufacturing operation from 1923 when Thomas opened it until his death in February 1974. But it changed starting about a year later, when Harader bought the business.

More of this inspiring story here.