ISPA didn't help Serta on mattress flammability
David Perry, Executive Editor -- Furniture Today, January 16, 2005
There's been a lot of talk in the industry about Serta's recent move to resign its membership in the International Sleep Products Assn.
Some say the reason Serta cited for exiting ISPA — that ISPA didn't help Serta grow its retail business — misses the mark. ISPA 's mission statement, as posted on its Web site, says nothing directly about boosting retail sales. "ISPA is dedicated to protecting and enhancing the growth, profitability and stature of the mattress manufacturing industry," the statement reads.
But a broader reading of Serta's move sheds light on fundamental differences between Serta and ISPA on a key issue, mattress flammability. As a news story elsewhere in this issue makes clear, Serta and ISPA had major disagreements on that issue last year.
Serta, the first national bedding producer to introduce open-flame protection last year, saw flammability as an opportunity to market safety messages to consumers. ISPA, on the other hand, saw lots of problems on the flammability front.
In fact, ISPA spent months arguing — ultimately to no avail — that California could not move ahead legally with its new mattress flammability standard. At that time, Serta was moving ahead with its introduction of FR bedding lines in California and the rest of the nation.
ISPA's arguments, which amounted to delaying tactics, were not helpful to Serta, or to other companies in the bedding industry who wanted to move ahead with new FR lines.
Nor, for that matter, are delays in FR introductions helpful to consumers. The U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission says that more than 400 consumers die in mattress and bedding fires each year. Time matters on this issue.
At times ISPA acted like Serta wasn't even an ISPA member. Serta's Al Klancnik played a key role in helping the industry win a favorable outcome on a flammability issue when he addressed a Senate committee last summer. Yet ISPA initially made no mention of Klancnik's testimony, instead tooting its own horn and leaving the impression that ISPA had scored a major victory for the industry.
Serta protested that shabby treatment by ISPA. There was no public apology by ISPA. Asked about ISPA's handling of the issue, President Dick Doyle defended the group's actions.
If ISPA's leaders had spent more time listening to what Serta was saying last year, they would have known that Serta didn't feel it was receiving any support from ISPA on the FR issue. But ISPA wasn't listening. Instead, it was too busy spinning its own version of what was happening on the FR front.
Now Serta has left ISPA. I hope ISPA will learn some lessons from its departure.
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ISPA didn’t help Serta on mattress flammability
Jan 16, 2005
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