Veterans launch Pure LatexBliss brand
By David Perry -- Furniture Today, September 7, 2009
ATLANTA — Bedding veterans Kurt Ling and Joe Hunt are launching a new virtual bedding company to market mattresses that feature latex foam in a variety of designs.
Pure LatexBliss will introduce four mattress lines at the upcoming Las Vegas Market. The brand is positioned as more akin to an upscale spa or a high-end cosmetic line than a traditional mattress line.
Retails for the latex beds will be concentrated on price points ranging from $999 to $3,999.
“In this economy, we see retailers needing greater profit margins and at the same time better quality products,” said Ling, formerly vice president of innovation and knowledge at Simmons and the principal of Customer Kinetics, a customer experience company.
“In the old model, for a manufacturer to give a retailer greater margin, the tradeoff was a product made with inferior materials,” Ling said. “When we analyzed that process, we saw an incredible amount of dollars spent on manufacturers' infrastructure and burden that isn't necessary.”
Ling and Hunt, who was formerly with Simmons and Ashley, where he was vice president of bedding, will both work virtually. There will be no corporate office. The company will use contractors to produce its mattress line.
Contract facilities are planned in the Northeast, Southeast, Midwest and the West Coast in the U.S., and in the United Kingdom and France.
The company says it will have a presence in Atlanta, London and Paris.
There will be no national advertising, but the company is planning what Ling calls “a serious Web presence.”
Ling is CEO of Pure LatexBliss; Hunt is executive vice president of sales.
Ling says this company marks his full-time return to the mattress business, a field in which he has remained engaged since he left Simmons in 2005 through various consulting projects for Customer Kinetics.
“I am 100%, full-fledged back into the bedding business,” he said.
Ling worked for Maytag for 13 years before joining Simmons in 1995, where he worked on the launch of the company's pioneering single-sided bedding line, among other projects.
Pure LatexBliss is an ultra-premium brand designed for women who love their mattresses. Ling described it as a trendy brand and product for those interested in wellness, and said the product is “refreshingly fashion forward.” The tagline is “Revitalize and Beautify,” a message designed to capture the emotional and physical advantages of restoration.
The company is using only latex foam in comfort layers and in models that feature foam-encased encased coils. Latex foam is featured in the comfort layers of all of the company's beds.
The components in the beds deliver better support and pressure relief because there are no “filler” materials in them to get in the way of the benefits of latex, according to Ling.
The “Our Finest” collection features beds with Talalay latex pressure relief layers with Talalay latex support cores.
The “Couture Collection with Talalay Latex” also features Talalay latex pressure relief layers and latex support cores.
The “Couture Collection with Talalay Latex and Encased Coils” uses Talalay latex pressure relief layers and foam-encased encased coils. The starter line is the Latex Light, which will retail at about $1,000.
Ling said Pure LatexBliss will be known for what it doesn't do. It doesn't quilt the top of the mattress, it doesn't use fiber, and it doesn't use conventional polyurethane foam anywhere except in the bottom inch of the mattress, if at all.
“In good times or in challenging economic times, the customer deserves to sleep on a mattress made with the finest materials available,” Ling said.
“A retail sales associate should never have to worry about whether the materials used in a specific mattress are as good as they used to be.”
Pure LatexBliss will show at the upcoming Las Vegas Market in World Market Center B-930.
Ling can be contacted at (404) 260-7421 or at kurt.ling@latexbliss.com.
The stories in this special report look at the strategies being pursued by three specialty sleep producers, all of whom are exhibiting at this month's Las Vegas Market.
ComforPedic, part of the Simmons portfolio, produces memory foam beds, as does Anatomic Global. Newcomer Pure LatexBliss, as its name suggests, emphasizes latex foam in its comfort layers, some of which cover latex cores and some of which cover encased coil cores.
These stories show that specialty bedding companies are using a variety of approaches to keep their category in the spotlight.
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