Mobile showroom a hitfor ComforPedic Loft
By David Perry -- Furniture Today, November 2, 2009
HIGH POINT — The ComforPedic Loft Showroom on Wheels rolled into market here the other day, more than halfway through its 10,000-mile tour of the United States and Canada.
The miles on the 18-wheeler, decorated with ComforPedic Loft signage, are adding up as fast as retail commitments to the new specialty sleep line, officials said.
Scott Smalling, president of Simmons' specialty sleep division, says that virtually every retailer who has seen the ComforPedic Loft line has agreed to floor some of the models.
The new line, which retails from $999 to $1,999, offers key features of the original ComforPedic memory foam line, including quick recovery, consistent comfort and heat dissipation, according to Smalling.
He has been singing the praises of the line to top retailers like R.C. Willey, Nebraska Furniture Mart and Sleepy's, and to mom-and-pop retailers, too. The reaction to the new line, launched at the Las Vegas Market in September, has been very positive, according to Smalling and Butch Webster, who has worked with Smalling since 2005 and is vice president of Simmons' specialty sleep division. He and Smalling are leading the Showroom on Wheels tour.
The two have been shaking up the industry and challenging conventional thinking in the memory foam segment since they joined forces at ComforPedic, an up-and-coming specialty bedding producer acquired by Simmons in 2007. Now they have joined forces on a two-month retail tour that breaks new ground, Simmons officials said.
Simmons President Steve Fendrich, who has more than 25 years of experience in the bedding industry, said he has never seen a retail tour like this one, which utilizes an 18-wheel rig set up as a mobile showroom.
“This is far and away a bigger success than we anticipated,” he said. The showroom provides “a pretty unique experience” for retail sales associates, he added.
The tour took on a life of its own as plans began coming together, Fendrich said. The original idea of taking an RV on the road gave way to the mobile showroom, a tractor-trailer whose interior was designed to resemble a loft apartment.
Retailers have been impressed with the showroom, which will hit 31 cities across the U.S. and Canada before the tour's scheduled end in November.
“This is very well done,” said Tom Wholley, president of 10-store Better Bedding of East Hartford, Conn. “This trailer is pretty cool.”
Smalling said the tour has been a hit.
“We are helping dealers who did not come to the Las Vegas Market get a first-class look at our products,” he said. “Also, in these challenging times, we are helping our dealers keep their travel expenses as low as possible. The overall retail reaction to this initiative has been overwhelmingly positive. And the tour has also generated a positive buzz within Simmons through the Tweets I am sending out and the success stories we are sharing internally with our Simmons associates.”
During a recent swing through New England, Smalling and Webster followed the 18-wheeler in a rental car.
Smalling started the national tour in the passenger's seat of the big rig, which is driven by veteran trucker Bill Gibson of Columbus, Ohio-based In Motion Promotion.
The first leg took Gibson and Smalling from Las Vegas to Los Angeles. Then it was north to Sacramento and east to Salt Lake City and Denver. Webster joined the tour in Omaha, Neb.
From New York, the showroom headed south. It arrived in High Point just in time for the opening of the High Point Market last month. Then it was back on the road for a trip to the Simmons campus in Atlanta, followed by a swing through the South and Midwest.
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