FurnishNet linking 55 bedding retailers to 8 mattress producers
Brian Carroll -- Furniture Today, June 21, 2004
San Diego — San Diego— Bedding specialists both at retail and in manufacturing are embracing Internet-enabled electronic document exchange.
FurnishNet has linked 55 bedding retailers and eight of the 10 largest bedding manufacturers, using XML and the Internet to allow paperless document exchanges, transactions and systems monitoring.
Bedding retailers that have partnered with the business-to-business Internet company include 40-store Innovative Mattress Solutions, 300-store Sleepy's, 257-store Mattress Giant, 50-store Mattress Gallery and 47-store Sleep Country USA.
The total number of bedding stores conducting transactions with FurnishNet's exchange approaches 1,000, according to the company.
Bedding manufacturers that have signed on include Simmons, Sealy, Spring Air, Serta, Kingsdown, King Koil and Tempur-pedic. Components supplier Leggett & Platt also uses FurnishNet to trade electronically with its customers.
Many of the bedding companies are looking to FurnishNet's solution for what electronic data interchange once promised. Though EDI is approaching 20 years old, its steep startup costs and relatively high transaction charges have impeded its adoption in the furniture industry to date.
"High-speed connections, dedicated resources and high transactional overhead have traditionally been very prohibitive for small- and midsized companies wanting to realize the efficiencies of EDI," said Brian Wagoner, director of information systems for Innovative Mattress Solutions. "We had not employed any EDI technologies."
Since hooking up with vendors via FurnishNet in May 2002, IMS reports it has achieved approximately a 25% savings in the time required to issue purchase orders and acknowledgements, according to Wagoner. He also said vendor relationships, pricing and lead times have improved since switching to Internet-enabled electronic document exchange.
The high volume of transactions and the requisite quick turnaround times for orders motivated bedding specialists to be willing to try Internet-enabled solutions, according to Ron Sellers, FurnishNet's vice president of sales.
"Since the Internet has made electronic document exchange more affordable and practical to implement, they have been converting to electronic document exchange in record numbers," he said.
Manufacturers, too, are embracing the Internet for document exchanges, and for many of the same reasons.
"We use EDI but many of our small- and medium-size retailers do not," said Wade Vann, senior vice president of information technology and chief information officer for Simmons. "Our sales reps encourage customers to use EDI and let them know that the FurnishNet option is available to them."
Sleepy's was the first bedding chain to sign on with FurnishNet, linking up in September 2001. Northern Mattress is the most recent, signing on in November last year.
Sellers said FurnishNet connects approximately 525 furniture retailers and manufacturers.
