NY Times Interview with Mattress Honcho
The New York Times sits with H. Thomas Bryant, chief executive of today’s most profitable mattress manufacturing company, Tempure-Pedic. Below are some excerpts to the interview:
Q. Your company is not even 20 years old?
A. That’s true; we’ve been in the U.S. now for 13 years. It’s taken us quite a while to establish a business and a brand and start growing. About six years ago, when we started our distribution into furniture and bedding stores, we started advertising more aggressively.
We’re very fortunate because we have such a high referral rate: 95 percent of people who buy our mattress recommend it to other people. That’s a staggering percentage for a consumer products company. In this industry, it’s unheard-of. According to third-party research, the average American cannot tell what brand they sleep on. It was never a brand decision back then.
Q. What do you sleep on?
A. The one I personally have is called the Rhapsody, which has the new top layer of our Tempur material that’s really dense; we call it Tempur-HD for high density. It’s incredibly comfortable, yet it gives you that excellent support.
Q. Do you think you’ll come out with another blockbuster product?
A. We certainly hope so. Our plan is to introduce another new mattress in the U.S. in January.
Q. Are you saying I should hold off buying a mattress until January?
A. Well, we have a lot of good ones out there right now.
Q. Any special plans for the holiday season?
A. If you think about mattresses, there’s some seasonality in our industry. Unfortunately, we haven’t figured out how to get a lot of mattresses under Christmas trees. We do quite a bit of business with our pillows. Pillows are an excellent gift. A lot of the specialty stores we work with like Brookstone, Bed, Bath & Beyond, Linens ’n Things, usually run specials during the Christmas holidays for the pillows. Historically, the industry has a downturn in the fourth quarter as a result of December.
Tags: best-mattress-brand, MATTRESS News, MATTRESS Shopping, mattress-buying, mattress-company, mattress-for-the-holidays, mattress-manufacturer, tempurpedic-mattress
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